We're here because we're here

Wednesday

I’m soaked through, have been for days. No food again today. Someone said we’re here to be starved, another said lambs to the slaughter. Tom looks like he can’t take it anymore. He’s the oldest here and a proper drinker. Said it might just do him good, a bit of time away and the like. Happy to do his country proud two days ago, but now his skin crawls in his own shit and his lungs are heavy with dampness. He shouldn’t have been allowed to come.

Friday

Tom died two hours ago. Still no commanding officer to tell us what to do with him. Two of the lads have gone potty. They keep having the same nightmare where we all die of starvation and if we try to escape the trench we’re shot down immediately. They’re twins from a posh family so I’m not sure what they’re doing here.

Saturday

We’ve been here two weeks now. The twins keep trying to escape but we pull them back down every time. They’ve been shackled now and not a word out of them. A commanding officer told us to dig a grave within the trench wall for Tom. The stench was hideous so we did it quickly. No news from above apart from the Germans are now equal in number against us, sat in a trench across the way. I’m not sure anyone knows what we’re doing here. Maybe there’s no real war.

Sunday

Godfrey keeps chatting to himself. He thinks he’s talking to his sister in Eastbourne. He was fine till yesterday but now he’s away. Tom’s carcass has been permeating the wall and it’s just rank so we’ve all had to move away from it. Commanding officer says he’ll have it taken away within the next few days.

Monday

Something really special happened today. We were all just sat like normal trying to think about nothing when one of the lads bursts into tears, repeating ‘why are we here?’ He stopped and there was an awful silence but then Dave, who’s a chirpy chap, said ‘we’re here because we’re here’. He said it quite jovially, then someone else giggled and repeated what Dave said, ‘yep, we’re here because we’re here,’ and then someone else said it in a different way again, chirpy and comical, and we all laughed for what seemed the first time in an age. It was a mad, happy laugh, then this man, who always keeps himself to himself, started singing over everyone’s laughter.

 ‘We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here, we’re here because we’re here because we are here because we’re here.’

Every one of us joined in until the whole length of the trench was drunk on the singing and the words. We sang for ages, must have been more than twenty minutes, just going on and on, one minute mad as hatters, the next melancholic and thoughtful, thinking of things back home. It didn’t matter if the Germans thought we were crazy, we probably were, but for that brief time we didn’t care why we were here. We just were.

Wednesday

The battle lasted under half an hour and I was one of the few to survive. Took a bullet to both thighs running out early on and couldn’t move so I just went down. Luckily we gained ground over the Germans in a short space of time so I was able to aim fire properly at a dozen or so from my ground position. We’re getting transferred to London tomorrow. There’s only twenty-eight of us left out of two hundred and fifty.