The ground is full of craters and of course they are full of water. A canal not far from here overflowed its banks. I suppose that didn’t help the general water level, and bodies which had been lying at the bottom since July all came to the surface and were spewed over the countryside.
Ahead I can just see the enemy line and their sandbags, poor devils, they are in just the same mess as we are, suffering all the same problems, I can’t blame them for strafing us all the time just to relieve their feelings. Their wire looks horrifying. It’s much deeper and thicker and more carefully set up than ours, even though we spend all night and use bale after bale of the wretched stuff, which cuts into your hands even if you have gauntlets on. Of course their shells just keep breaking it all down.
Well there, I have told you what it’s like and made it sound bad because that is the truth and I would have you believe it all, and tell it to anyone who asks you with a gleam in their eye how the war is going on. A mess. That’s all. I shouldn’t say that but we censor our own letters, unless we’re unlucky enough to have one stopped at random going through the next sorting-post. I’ll chance it. Tell all this to anyone who starts talking about honour and glory. I know you will understand, though John, who has been reading this, says he could not write such things to his own family. They believe we are making advances the whole time, that by Christmas we shall all come home as conquering heroes, that every death of ours is really a nail in the coffin of the Boche, and we will chase them out of France like a pack of dogs, over the top of the hill. He doesn’t complain to them about his physical condition, either, as I have been doing to you. But in fact he has far less resistance than me – hence his cold, which I have not had and nor did I get the dysentery which went the rounds not so long ago. My only injury so far as been some kind of small sore on my foot where I must have trodden on something. Scarcely worth going all the way to the M.O. to complain about!
I almost gave up a short while ago. I can tell you about it now. A deserter is shot if found, of course. I had come to feel that I would rather be shot. You will be ashamed of me. But in fact I did not intend to desert, I had thought of surrendering as a conchy. I didn’t and will not do so now. I can’t say any more about it here. I would need to sit round with you all and talk about it. I am better, in any case, I think I have come out of the other side of whatever wood it was.
But I am no longer so gay and light-hearted. I keep worrying that when you see me you will notice changes. But a few days with you at home would restore everything. The men, in spite of their weariness, keep us all sane, particularly Coulter and the Platoon Sergeant called Locke. He is a fisherman from Suffolk, and tells us amazing stories of storms and lifeboats and also of long days spent fishing miles off shore, when the water is smooth and glitters like silk and the wind drops and the fish pour into his nets and he rocks in his boat and smokes a pipe and is the happiest of men. Oh, I envy him: he will go back to it and ask nothing more. He has five sons. You wouldn’t think he’d be at home here but he is more good-humoured and long-suffering and patient than anyone, and behaves as though most of the younger men were extra children of his! He is also very religious though in a rather stern way. He talks to the young privates when their swearing gets too blasphemous or obscene, and it is as though he is really hurt by it. He gives us all good advice about marrying nice wives and rearing broods of boys! We love him, because he is so straight and conscientious.
Everybody grumbles about the wet and the food and the general low state of health, everyone is on edge with being shifted from pillar to post but there is still this constant, grim good humour, jokes fly back and forth, nobody is cantankerous. Otherwise we would all have given up long ago. Every now and again Coulter gives us his pep talk, about how we are going to ‘go out there and show ’em’. I think he isn’t entirely convinced that John and I share his fighting spirit, but he never gives up!
LATER
We have had a very bad day. Trench flooded and like a river again. But the shelling has been simply awful. We were strafed for about three hours without a break and all we could do was to sit tight and watch and pray. The C.O. and the Adjutant had just come down and they spent part of the raid in our dugout. We all huddled together in the near dark and every minute or two there was a crash and we all avoided one another’s glance. Earth kept thudding down on the roof – I thought we were all going to be buried alive. When I did have to go out into the trench I felt a lot safer. Then there was a constant cry for stretcher bearers. The C.O. went up and down several times in the middle of it all. The men like and respect him for it. He looks very ill though. He brought a bottle of whisky with him and left it for us to finish when he went. Neither of us much likes whisky but we have been needing it, I can tell you.
Captain Franklin is imperturbable, as cool as a cucumber. Very efficient, which the men also respect. They know he isn’t going to lose his head. John says he may have a head to lose but certainly not a heart. I wonder.
For much of the time when we emerged into the trench, we could see nothing beyond about 20 yards, for the smoke and mud being sent up in great spouts like water from a whale. The noise was unbelievable. It’s like being in a tunnel with trains both roaring towards you and coming at you from behind, and then going on over your head, screeching and wailing. And then the crash crash, crump crump. I thought my brain, or at the very least, my eardrums, would burst from the din. A lot of men had been sent fancy ear-muffs and plugs and heaven knows what other bits and pieces by well-meaning aunts at home but you would need a lot more than some rubber or cotton wadding to shut out any of this. I should think you must be able to hear it all where you are. Every gun of every size must have been trained on us for the whole of three hours. We lost a lot of men. The Suffolk Sergeant whom I told you about just above, which upset us all, and a subaltern called Glazier, who was horribly mangled but lived for a while, in a terrible state. He was, I’m told, incredibly brave and kept on telling them not to bother to send down stretcher bearers, he wouldn’t live to need them, they were to save them for someone else. I had never liked him much, and so had occasionally gone out of my way to be friendly to him – a bit hypocritical, but I’m glad I did now. I’m sorry he’s dead, because he was looking forward to leave which was due shortly, and which would come nicely at the start of the fox hunting season. He lived for hunting. They did fetch a stretcher party for him which was, as it happened, the worst luck of all, because no sooner had they got him on and gone a few yards than they were all hit, which meant three dead men instead of one and we needed all the stretchers and bearers we could get.
John and I are quite unharmed.
The worst thing apart from the noise and mess is being so thirsty, after the constant breathing in of shell dust and cordite and so on. Your throat feels as if it’s being burned out. Well, and after all that, nothing came. We had, of course, been expecting an attack, the Germans were surely on their way down into our trenches, the men had fixed bayonets the whole time, and were waiting and waiting – Coulter, I may add, with something near to glee. He can’t wait to get his bayonet stuck into someone, which I find very chilling, and more so because he is basically such a nice chap. But when the strafing finally stopped, everything just went quiet. They left us to pick up the pieces. I don’t know what the point of it all was. Garrett said they were expecting us to retreat out of here, but we couldn’t have done so successfully, and in any case, nobody thought of it.