Over The Top

23rd October 1916

We had just gone over the top, the ground ahead was muddy, wet and full of shell holes some 5m deep! We have been sent out to observe where the Huns are setting up more machine guns, the stench of rotting bodies as we trudged on almost made my cold bully beef stew come back! We had to use signals to communicate so that the Hun can't hear us, the worst thing is that if one person gets something wrong we all may die. There is also the constant threat of snipers which really doesn't help the confidence.
We had made it! We had just started to do sketches when we came under heavy machine gun fire we all the immeadietly hit the deck but not before mick got two bullets in the leg and arm. We started to fire back it, was horrible I had never shot at another human being before and been able to see the look of terror on their dieing faces, I felt so muderous.
We supressed their fire and finished our drawings when we got back to our trench we were all tired cold and extremely wet and muddy, sadly we had to leave mick behind cuz he copped 3 more bullets, one in the neck and two in the groin. That was 2 men we had lost in as many days this war is terrible i just want to go home back to Warwickshire.