Max Symonds

World History 5-2

Mr. Tierney
05/07/14
Imagine that you are a French soldier fighting in the trenches and write about your
experiences.

Putain De Guerre!
Chre Marie,
I am writing to you from a miserable trench somewhere near
Verdun. I cannot express just how awful it is to be here rather then at
home with the family. It feels like only yesterday that the military came
to our village telling us the war had begun and that the French army
needed volunteers. Since my classmates and I had just graduated that
summer, we were bored and needed excitement in our lives, and of
course we were all shocked and angered to hear that France had been
invaded by the Krauts so we all signed up. I only wished that I had a
chance to say goodbye before we were sent to the front. The long ride
to front was one of joy and anticipation. We all sang war songs of our
grandfathers and we all made bets on how many krauts wed each hit.
But all of that eagerness and excitement disappeared in an instant as
soon as we were unloaded from the lorries.
We were dropped off 2 miles behind the front, but the carnage
and death toll of war lay before us on stretchers and beneath the
bloody blankets covering these poor souls. The air was dry and stank
of rotten corpses and gunpowder, all around, nurses were tending to
the wounded and priests put the spirits of these young men to rest.
Above us the cloudless sky was dark and covered with smoke. But
there was no time to stop and take it all in. Our Lieutenant gathered
our platoon and hollered To the front boys! May god be with you and
Vive La France! But what were we fighting for anyways? For a duke in
Austria? No, we were fighting for our homeland, for France, to kill the
aggressor. But what was all this worth?
It has been over two years since I arrived at the front, and Im
sad to say that I will be here in La Lorraine for Christmas 1916
tomorrow. We have won the nine-month battle of Verdun and we are
exhausted. It ended four days ago and many of my friends are not here
to see the end of it with me. Our good childhood friends such as Marc,
Antoine, Francois, Nicolas, Pierre-Hugues and many more from our
town have perished and I can only feel sorrow for the loss of the
mothers and therefore a loss for our whole village. I am writing to you
knee deep in mud with rats for companions and in a trench of graves. I
do not see an end to the war and I can only hope that an angel is
watching over me. I am lucky to be alive. Both armies are weak and my
battalion is going to give one last push to take the German trench

barley fifty meters from us. Every time we attack we lose a countless
number of lives only for a sliver of land and the soldiers are
demoralized. I am starving, I cannot sleep due to the constant shelling
which extinguishes the lives of my friends, of my brothers in arms and I
am barely able to speak for I am forever scarred by the atrocities of
war.
I have to end to end this letter for in a couple minutes. Whats
left of my company will go over the top where many will find their
resting place. Take care my sister, and tell father and mother that I
love them. I am not only fighting for France, but I am fighting to go
home. Pray for me; every time I run into no mans land I feel as if it is
my last. Pray for every goddamn German I kill, pray for all the French
soldiers I fight with, pray for all the allies and pray for France. There is
no glory in war, there is no victory. For every man, friend or enemy that
falls before me, I become less human and the closer to death I feel.
Je taime avec tout mon coeur, et jai hte de revenir a la maison
quand la guerre est finie.
Je tembrasse Marie.
Putain de Guerre!
Julien Dubois.