June 30th, 1916
My dear Mary Rose,
June 30th, 1916
I am writing to you tonight because I know it may be the last chance I get. I want to tell you about what it has been like living in these dreadful trenches.
My mornings in the trenches are the same every day; I awake to the dreadful sound of gunshots signalling the start of a new day. First, you dress, then you stand too. Every soldier is required to stand at dawn and dusk; most attacks are at that time. Once we’re given the okay, you can make breakfast. Our breakfasts are revoltingly off-putting; they consist of hot tea, dry biscuits, bread made from dried ground turnips, and soup made of rat and horse meat. Honestly, I’m just happy we can eat here.
Darling, you wouldn’t believe the conditions we’re living in. The trenches are horrific; they are both muddy yet dry, cold, and hot. They are made of dirt, mud, wood, barbed wire, and dead bodies. Every thirty metres there is a dugout and living spaces. All along the wall are places to stand, and it is lined with barbed wire. The trenches are so wet and muddy, although we still must stand in the mud for hours at a time. My friends have started to get trench foot, and let me say it is revolting. The smell is nauseating, and the pain is almost unbearable. Trench foot is so bad; first, the feet swell, then start to bleed and crack. They get so swollen you can stick a bayonet through their foot, and they won’t feel a thing. The worst part of all is when their feet start to un-swell and the pain is excruciating! Some soldiers have it so bad their legs need to be amputated. Now that the officials have started to lose more soldiers to trench foot, they have started to order us to look after our feet. Every day you must dry your feet and change socks, then rub whale oil into your feet.
Don’t even get me started on the freaking rats! They run all over the place as if they own it (to be fair, they were here first), but they’re horrible. They’re nothing like the rats back home; they grow to the sizes of our faces! When I’m lying at night, I’ll be rudely awoken by these monster rats running all over my body. The rats eat the eyes of dead soldiers; it’s insane! I once saw a dead man lying on the ground, and his flesh was newly stripped off his face, his eyes gone, and rats all over; his mouth lay open, and this gigantic black, hairy rat climbed out of his mouth; it was so gross I threw up! To sum it up, rats are a big problem, and it's horrid to have to live with them.
As a soldier, my duties are basic compared to the officers; my duties consist of fixing damaged walls, listening for enemies, keeping my area clean and open, clearing dead bodies, and helping people to the medical centre. I also must help dig deeper, newer, and better trenches. Most importantly, I must help kill the bad guys, even though I don’t want to. I’d say I have it pretty good where I’m stationed.
Now there’s this one thing called shell shock. Unfortunately, most of the soldiers are suffering from it because it’s so traumatising here with all the gunshots and bombs. It’s making people insane to the point of shooting themselves; it's horrifying to watch my mates change from an optimistic person to an insane, unrecognisable human.
Now let me talk about the nighttime. Normally people would think of the nighttime as a time of rest and peacefulness. In the trenches, it is the opposite. With the monsters called rats running around, it's impossible to lie down without them crawling all over you, and to add to that, there are always bombs going off. Either ours or the enemy’s; either way, it’s horrible. The sound is like the entrance song to hell. Honestly, it feels like hell here. At night I dream of you. I dream of the time I got to hold you tight. How incredible it was to feel your skin against mine. How perfect your lips were. I miss you so much, my darling; it’s so hard to sleep without you by my side. I also dream of the suffering I’ve been through—the bombs, guns, knives, grenades, gas, and the petrifying looks on my friends's faces as they get blown up.
There was this guy in our group. We called him Blue because he was a ginger; no idea why we just did. Blue wanted to go home so badly that he shot himself in the foot. It was so stupid, yet smart, as he was sent home not long after. He was a good guy but not very smart. When he was given the order to leave, he got so excited he forgot to duck when walking out, and his head got blown up the second he stood up. It was awful! We all watched as Blue dropped to the floor with his bag in hand and a picture of his wife and kids. That day was filled with sorrow, and all the men had a look of both disappointment and grief on their faces, and so did I.
I’ve grown to love all the men in my group. I’ve spent so much time with them that they now feel like brothers to me. Although the officers can be a bit harsh, we’ve had some good laughs when we can. Even this one officer, I think his name was John; gave me some of his food because rats ate mine. I’ll always be grateful for that. The Germans are awful! The ones that know English always spit rude comments over no man’s land. It just makes me want to beat them up and watch them suffer. I hope they pull back; I want to go home.
Honey, tomorrow we’ve been ordered to go over the top. This time we might not come back. It’s so frightening; I hate being at the front. Normally I would love to go first, but not tomorrow. I’m terrified; I have no idea what’s going to happen; I’m so scared I won’t be able to move; I’m scared I won’t be able to fight; I don’t want to die at the hands of the Germans; I want to die with you at an old age with grandkids running around, not here covered in mud with rats eating my brain. I think I’m a coward. I should want to fight for my people. I should be strong like a true man. Tomorrow we will be going over the top to no man’s land, and we may not survive.
I love you, Mary Rose. I love you so much. You’re the love of my life. I love your eyes, lips, smile, hair, and how you dress. I love you. I’m going to miss you so dearly; I hope you find someone to love you just as much as I do. I hope you live a long and full life. Please take care of yourself... Live for me; live your life twice as much for me. Be happy, please; don’t be sad for long; keep going. I love you and know you can do it. I know you’ll be just as strong without me. I’ll be watching over you every second; you’re not alone. I’ll always be with you, whether you know it or not. I’m going to make sure you’re safe. I’ll be protecting you, I promise. I love you, my darling, with all my heart. I’ll love you forever; I’ll meet you in our next life, my love.
Goodbye, my love.
~ your beloved husband, Harold Boyd.
Hello! Ley here to review this delightful work for you. Today, I’ll be using my 'Autumn-Themed Review Template'! We’ll begin with my initial impressions, then delve into the aspects that stood out like the vibrant hues of fall, and then get into the critiques. I hope you find this review insightful, and that you're enjoying the cozy charm of autumn, wherever you are in the world! Let’s dive in!
The First Signs of Autumn
Like Iggy said, you did such a good job of describing the conditions of what it would've been like for a soldier in the trenches. This letter hits hard for me because my grandfather was a retired soldier, who had to go through so much back in the day-- and this helped me imagine what it could've possibly been like for him. Anyways, enough with the sappy stuff XD Let's get into the review!
A Golden Harvest
Showing how grateful Harold is simply for just being able to eat shows how horrible the tension was, and how the environment effected the soldiers' ability to do normal bodily things. I think most people forget to mention these things when they write a historical piece, so I'm glad you did. It's sad, but needed for story/character/plot development.
This was also heartbreaking, but once again, needed. It's normal for Harold to have feelings of dismay or worry, and its tragic that he had to send his wife a letter like this (even though its fictional). I really enjoyed how he consoled her, and told her to be sad for a short time. He seems like such a good husband. <3
I can't help but wonder if he made it out alive, and I really hope he did. I'd love to read a piece about Harold getting to see his wife again!
Wilted Leaves and Crisp Critiques
I noticed the grammar issues, but since Iggy pointed it out, I won't repeat it. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this and don't have any other suggestions
Cozy Conclusion
Thank you for sharing this! I was on the verge of tears by the end of this piece, which is a good thing because it means you connected with the reader. I hope you're having a lovely day, and happy RevMo!
Hi there, Saucee26! Welcome to YWS! It's nice to meet you. Thanks for sharing this amazing piece of historical fiction with us. This is a perspective from which I never considered writing from and it was a very interesting read. It reminded me of things I had learned long ago and since forgotten about.
Before I tell you what I thought about the story itself, I will share the punctuation and/or grammatically errors I noticed as I was reading:
First, regarding the title - treanches will need to be changed to trenches.
to keep the flow you had going there, I would say "they are both muddy yet dry; cold yet hot."
for "friends's" here, remove the second letter s.
One last thing I would like to point out is your overuse of semicolons. While I think that they are an excellent choice of punctuation to use, it's best to avoid using them consistently, as it weakens their impact on the writing. You should opt to use conjunctions more and save the semicolons for sentences with a harder impact.
Here's an example of where I think a semicolon was used well:
versus where I think you could have used a conjunction or a comma instead:
+ all of the second-to-last paragraph where Harold is telling his wife that he loves her and wants her to live a happy life. It is very semicolon heavy.
This is, of course, just a suggestion and if you choose to keep using semicolons then that's your prerogative.
Besides that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story. I never would have considered writing a story from the perspective of a soldier in the middle of the first World War, nor would I been able to describe it as clearly as you did. You covered a lot of important details here: from the horrible food they had to eat, to the trench feet, to the living conditions they had to endure, and to the death that was all around them. Your use of descriptive details provided strong imagery for the reader and evoked all of the five senses as we imagined what life as a soldier must have been like. I especially liked (and disliked) the care you took with describing the trench rats and the way it must have felt to see them doing what rats do best. I also loved the tender way Harold spoke to his wife through this letter and reaffirmed his love and devotion to her, and his longing to return home to her and start a family. It made me sad to think of how he most likely did not return home, and made me think of the men that lived and died the same way Harold did, longing to come home to their loved ones.
What a good piece. Thank you for sharing it with us. I hope this review provided some help.
~Iggy