Hell of lif e in W W1 trenches

HERE ar e some of Wilf words from the front: ’s March 12, 1916, Kemmel Chateau, near Ypres. “The raiding party made ready at dusk, leaving letters and sentimental oddments with pals to post home – their blackened faces and dulled bayonets gr otesquely emphasising the whites of their eyes… I saw Ser geant Johnstone. He was smoking . I saw the earth lift along the tr ench. Crawling away I overtook the ser - geant. I saw his three stripes and tried to speak. He was leaning back – no , God, he was only half there. I scr ambled away.” September 1916 , Albert, in Fr ance. Battle of the Somme “Only stumps of trees, the gr ound soft, loose and churned up. Not one single inch had escaped and the dead lying as they fell, just part of the soil, except where pals had scr aped a cover over and stuck the rifle on its bayonet to identify the spot. For miles these upside down rifles r eplaced the gone vegetation. I estimated my chances of survival fr om now on as 100-1 against.” September 15, 1916 , “As we stepped over those who fell, I realised the high gr ound was reached. We were among enemy shells. So far, simple mass slaughter had been the rule. I sat and dozed. Tommy was pushing me out of a soldier’s half sleep . ‘Look what you’ve sat on, fathead, come on further away’. I look ed and the decomposed face of a Jerry gazed back. Much trampling over him had integr ated him with the earth and he was mer ely the bump in the ground I’d found so convenient.” Late September 1916, the Somme “We all sailed into the other private fight, gr abbing whatever weapons we could. Ripping roars overhead, above the cr ack of whizz-bangs, told of vicious shrapnel but the mind refused even fear; smoke, flash, one’s aching eyes almost shut, in nostrils that acrid smok e, of powder and newly disintegr ated bodies long dead. “An instinctive dive for breathing time into a deep dug out in a clump of tree stumps, full of bodies – and out again, and on.”