About a year ago I signed up to be in the army and now here I am in Germany. I am being sent to the front line soon and I don�t know exactly when but all I know is that I'm not looking forward to it. About a year I thought that being in the war was going to be a courageous and honorable thing to do. But know all the things that I am hearing I don�t know if I want to go. I�ve heard that the people there are starting to go insane because they are realizing its insane what they are doing. They must be crazy. The German are our enemies and we do need to make sure they loose this war.
I just hope that I get in a good front with not that much war. Just a little peace and not a whole lot of fighting. I just want to make sure that I come home alive to my children and wife. I am terrified that I won�t be able to see them for another 3 years until my time is up. I can barely survive without them. My idea of what is going to happen on the front is that we are going to be demolishing these people and taking control of all that they have. The United States and the allies are going to take control of all the Germans and make sure that we win and never have to put up with them again.
I am stocking up on food before I leave camp for the trenches. I�ve heard that the trenches are full of vermin and other weird diseases. The thing that I am most scared of is the mustard gas. I don�t want to have any part in that. I just want to do my time and not get hurt and get out of the trenches. I am starting to think of my children a lot and I don�t know how I am living without them by my side. I don�t know why I volunteered for this war. I have everything I want at home. I guess if this is going to help out my sons in the future and make them have a better life I will constantly precede with full duty to them and my great country the United States of America.
June 4th 1918
This is my third day living in the trenches. All is see is smoke, death, and rats. Rats the size of small cats. The Germans are bombarding us with mortars and I am supposed to go into no mans land in the next two days. My mission will be to lay down barbed wire so those German scums will have more trouble getting to us.
All I have in my head is the sound of screaming of the wounded soldiers from the mortars and the re treaters that have been mortally injured. We can�t do anything for these kids that are only a mere 18. I am 25 and I am become scared as an 11 year old girl when she thinks a monster is under her bed. I hear screaming, I see blood, I smell smoke, and I fear war now. The trenches are wet and muddy. There are small openings that you can find some comfort from the sounds. During the day when it is all quiet you can see the total destructiveness of the war. At night when the enemy is trying to cross your line all you hear is the gun shots from the machine guns and the pistol shots from the soldiers protecting themselves from the opposing side.
Worst of my entire friend Ralph that has been with me all through training took at bullet in the jaw. He is still alive but I have to be honest with myself and prepare myself for his death. He is getting infected. The weird thing is that the doctors aren�t really trying to save him. There is no way they can with the limited number of supplies they have. Another disturbing sight was when I saw a person get shot for the first time. I saw him fall onto his knees. He looked happy as he was dying. He had been in the trenches for almost a year now. I guess he thought that whatever comes after this life is a lot better than these trenches. And I would have to agree.
July 5th 1918
I haven�t written in the book for over a month. I have been really caught up with all that I have been seeing, hearing, and feeling. This is the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life. I hate this job. I hate the trench. In the day time it is so boring and we have nothing else to do but sit around and wait until night time when fighting begins. When the sun comes back out we can see how many people we have lost. How many lives that we have to say goodbye to. My best friend George was sitting next to me at night. A sniper picked his head off. He died in my hands. I couldn�t do anything to save him. I could help him at all. This war is ruthless and it doesn�t care who it kills, why it kills, and I think it is just plain bush.
I have now seen the gruesome truth about the trenches in this war. I am very lucky though. My friend got trench foot. It is appsolutely repulsive and digesting. He might die from it because there is some weir fungus growing off of it. I saw a rat to and it was about the size of a cat. I see them every once in a while and they eat our food. Another disgusting thing that I am seeing more and more of is the lice. White eggs are being left in our heads and we cannot get them out. It is repulsive and it is very worry some. But I think out of everything the day it rain it filled up the trench making it almost impossible to stay dry. We were so wet we had to throw water out of the trench to make sure we didn�t get pneumonia or anything like that. From that day on a lot of us has come down with the trench foot. Tim Watts had to get his foot amputated because of it. After the amputation he died of an infection of his right foot that isnt there anymore. I just need to focus on stay healthy and dry and not getting shot. This war is a cruel and now I am scared.
July 8th 1918
Yesterday I had to go over the trench and plant some barbed wire. The Germans opened fire. They killed 12 out of the 16 of us. The boys that I was running with were only 18 years old. Shrapnel was thrown everywhere by the mortar. There was no way to get around it. The boys were surrounding me some how and I didn�t get hit. I was very lucky and I pray to God to keep those boys in his grace. Mustard gas was thrown into our trench. A lot of guys are very sick. They keep coughing up bloody pieces of there own lungs. I think I�ve been tortured by god because has saved me too many times. I just want to get out of this life that I am living right now. I cannot stand being in this trench anymore. I cannot believe the unjust acts that my fellow brothers are committing. We are all human but just under different reign. The soldiers never did anything to the opposing generals. The generals and the politicians should be fighting here not me.
I think I might be going insane and I know a couple of men have. They commit suicide by running over the top willing to get shot for there country. It is almost impossible to not e shot in this war and I am the only that feels that I am fighting for the wrong reason. The other boys want to fight for a reason that doesn�t exist in my mind. Maybe I am loosing it. Maybe I am the one that can�t be trust. Maybe I need to run across the line and make sure that I end my life and see my wife and children in the clouds above instead of dieing a slow painful death by beings stabbed, shot, gassed, or even infected. I saw my friend look out over the trench and another friend go picked off by the sniper. I can�t sleep anymore because all I hear is the screaming. All I see is the blood and gore that is going on. All I feel is pain and sorrow. All I know is war right now. All I want to do is be back home and wish I never enlisted.
November 29th 1918
The day after my last entry I was again laying more barbed wire in no mans land. A mortar came in and shrapnel flew into the air all around me. I had 5 other boys next to me. The shrapnel killed 4 of them. The one alive was in very bad condition and he died about an hour later. Before I could realize anything I tried to feel if I was alright. I wasn�t. I couldn�t feel my legs or anything. All I felt was pain on my arms and a burning in my lungs. I bent down to cough and cover my mouth. When I bent down I saw that an arm was lying on the ground. I looked at my arms and there wasn�t anything there. They were severed off by the shrapnel. I feel down and cried. One of my friends saw me from the trench and he got up and carried me in. He had to take on more step to be in safety but then he got shot smack in the head. He dropped me into the trench. He saved my life and died in the process.
The day I got home from the war my wife and sons met me when I came back to the base in the United States. My wife saw that I had no arms. My son didn�t even recognize me. My wife starred at my arms that weren�t there and burst into tears. I couldn�t do anything. I couldn�t hold her. I couldn�t give my son a hug. Since then I haven�t had that much will to keep going. The war was too much for me to see. The army gave me a job at a recruiting office. I have no arms. I can barely right and I have an assistant that helps me. My prosthetics work but they are too hard to control. I feel that I lost a part of my life, and I know that I am now disabled for a political movement. We won the war, but in my mind we paid too much for it in human sacrifice. I know nothing but war now. I don�t feel the same and I don�t think I ever will. I don�t have a will to live.
