‘My dearest girls,’ he wrote in handwriting that was barely legible and on crumpled, brown-stained paper, I read your letters every day, Flora. They give me hope that I am not too far removed from sanity. Whilst this nightmare around me seems real, your words remind me of the world I came from and want with all my heart to return to. As I write, shrapnel bursts above us, flares light up the evening sky. I crouch by the gun wheel that rolled into the trench from the last bombardment. God only knows what happened to the troops who manned it. Thousands have perished in this God-forsaken land. We hardly have legroom in the mud and filth mixed in it. Our gumboots reach our thighs and clip to our belts, but even so, the mud fills them. We lost many men at Artois. The enemy is firing constantly, never letting us rest. Comrades fall silently around me, or sometimes with unbearable screams. The rats drive us mad. They chew into our haversacks and scavenge the rotting corpses. They are afraid of nothing, not even the shelling, and flourish in abominable conditions.
