First Day At The Front

21st October 1916

Woke up to heavy shelling this mornin'. My Sargent then made us dig a trench for ourselves to stay in this toook us till lunchtime. Lunch was a tin of bully beef dumped on top of hard biscuits that had obviously been around for a couple of months. We stayed in the trench playing card games and smoking to pass the time. Then the rain started, it poured down for 3 hours after which the trench had 2ft of water in the bottom of it. We took turns doing sentry duty but thats how we lost the first guy Spatrick, he was on duty and decided to light up, unfortunatly for him a sniper was watchin and he took a bullet through the head. This brought everyone closer to the realisation that death was around every corner. That night we got a tot of rum to keep us warm and we slept under our trench coat trying to keep out of the water as best as possible.