Letters From The Past Part 2

Letters From The Past: Part 2

Set in the winter of 1914, during the first world war. It's pretty self explanatory, and as a joint history/english assignment there are a few historic terms/facts shoved in for good measure. It got me a national curriculum lvl. 7, which considering all last year i got 5+s, i was over the moon. I hope you like it, and thanks for the encouraging comments of part 1, my friends fished that letter out of my bag and took the piss out of everything about it and i have yet to be given a single apology. Thank you again ! you're alll very lovely (:

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Dearest Mother,

It is now mid-December and already this winter has been the foulest of seasons. Not a day has passed where the weather has shown the slightest of mercy on us soldiers, day after day, with harsh winds and rain like icicles flooding the trenches and soaking our feet.

Every morning we are dragged from what little sleep we can manage by the orderly officer and ordered to guard against a dawn raid by the enemy with our bayonets fixed. In these 4 months I’ve been “living” this pointless half-life not once has there ever been any actual need to stand there during “morning hate”, my eyes still blurry from sleep and my shoulder screaming at me for a proper mattress.

We are then expected to refill the sandbags that are supposed to drain these mud-holes of their unwanted moisture but scarcely make much difference. Most mornings after heavy rainfall the trenches need repairing and so it is that no actual fighting has ever yet taken place.

No glorifying victories brought about by heroic actions! No national pride and patriotism! Just the desolate no-mans land covered by the sacrifice of thousands of good, honest men. Where I was promised excitement there is but dull mind numbing activities set, it seems, only to prolong this needlessness they call war. How much good can this repetition really do?

All those months ago when I first joined the lines, I made many friends about whom I wrote to you. However, sadly, they have all but one perished, buried deep within the filth I spend my days in, brutally and unforgivably murdered. Shell attacks, snipers, trench fever, rats the size of cats. It is a wonder anyone has survived this “Great war”.

At night it feels as if the walls of the trenches are closing in on you, sucking you in until you might never see the light of day again. The repulsive stench of your friends, rotting beside you, their lifeless corpses just left to decompose is inescapable, and is an unwelcome reminder of the dangers that surround you, of which most are invisible but all unavoidable.

One day a few weeks ago though, this all changed for me. I was sent out to no-mans land- a death sentence for many. I was ordered to be a listening post and find out what the enemy were planning, but, as many of them were in the same position we were in, their conversations were of trivial importance to my superior officers and only made my heart ache as the Germans talked of families at home, of fiancées and children all relying on those men.

On my return to the trenches I made the mistake of lifting my leg a fraction too high and as a result ending up in this hospital bed. I do not know exactly what happened, except that my leg is not what it was thanks to the careful precision of a sniper bullet mistaking my foot for a head.

The doctors say I am no longer fit for war-so perhaps I shall soon be returning home to a simpler, easier life. It is Christmas soon and it would be nice to see you all again, spirited and happy, ignorant of what life could easily revert to. I doubt the war will have finished by Christmas day, so perhaps this chance to leave early is a blessing in disguise. I shall write again with more news soon.

All my love,

Albert.

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Well.....