Dearest Mother, Fighting in this war is not what I thought it was going to be like. The trenches where fellow soldiers and I are located smell horrid. Bodies are rotting around us and the thick scent of them are filling the already unclean air. It feels like pain in my nose as I am writing this. I am watching men get killed left and right. Today the Germans used tons of lethal chlorine gas on us. We were up against it, it was terrible. We had to urinate on handkerchiefs to prevent the gas from filling our lungs and killing us. I survived somehow, but watching some of my comrades fail to survive really wasn’t bonzer. Yesterday, my best pal Leo Clarke got a horrible case of trench foot. Sad to say, I think his foot require amputation.
I’m always hungry at night, food is quite rare.