I have not written to you in a long time, but I have been thinking of you every single day. Since last I wrote to you, I had a fractured arm- which is completely healed. We have just come out of the trenches after being in for six days and up to our waists in water. The war is going to last some time and might be another twelve months before it is over. The war has only just begun and its going to be a war of exhaustion. Hopefully more lads are being trained back at home, we certainly need more help out on the field. Our men our dying fast.
The conditions out here are still extremely bad although they seem to be normal for us. Getting up everyday not knowing what may happen, death may be around the corner for all we know. That is my biggest fear, the fear of death, the fear of never going home again, the fear of never seeing you one last time. But I fight everyday. I put up with the fear, the cold, the rats, the dead bodies, the gas, the smell, the lice and the loud ringing in my ears from all the gun shots and bombs.
There is nothing glamorous about trench life. The trench is dirty, smelly and infested with rats spreading disease. For us life in the trenches means living in fear. In fear of diseases and of course, the constant fear of enemy attack. The smell in the trenches are horrific. I've been wearing the same unchanged clothes for seven months. There are so many dead bodies everywhere, we can't bury them. All the men have lice- including me. The trenches are getting fuller and fuller each day from all the rain over the past few weeks.
Today sharp at three o'clock the order came down for us to load our rifles and to prepare to run across No Man's Land. Ten minutes later we got another order to charge so we rushed over the trench and started firing. A good few of our men had fell as the German had their machine guns firing at us. We kept running towards the German trench (which was a struggle) and we were so close, then they used gas.
