World War I - Letters From The Trenches

Letter 2

Dear Mother

How are you? How is Henry? I hope you got back from Aunt Lynn’s okay.  I’m hoping that I haven’t received a reply to the letter I sent because you don’t have my address yet? Or that you simply haven’t had time. I just hope you aren’t annoyed at me for leaving. I couldn’t stand to be at home whilst all my friends are here, and yet I can’t bear to have you disappointed in me. I hope that you’re proud of me, and what I’m doing for our country. So, I thought I’d tell you a bit about what we’ve been doing. You know I’ve never been any good at getting up early, and now we’re regularly woken up in the middle of the night for a run!  Apparently it’s so we are used to it by the time we get to the trenches as the Bosh might attack in the middle of the night, but it’s still very tiring, and it doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s hard for me to get up. I manage though, and James often makes me laugh whilst we’re running, but I have to try not to so we don’t get in trouble. We do assault courses, which I find quite fun surprisingly, but Billy finds them annoying – He keeps on asking when we are going to have to chase the Fritz over wooden gates and through tunnels. He does have a point, and he makes me smile, but I don’t think he’s looking at it the right way. We may not have to chase the Fritz through tunnels, but we’ll have to be agile, and fast, wont we? It’ll improve our chances o f survival. I tried to tell him that and he told me I over analysed things. We’ve also done backpack training, which means I’ve got some muscles now – Even if they are tiny!

You should see how much we have to carry! We’ve got our guns, 150 rounds of ammunition, water bottles, two canvas bags for our respirators and gas masks, as well as a haversack with a load of things in it, like our toothbrushes, and fork and spoons. It’s lucky you taught me to darn – a couple of the lads have no idea how to, so I’ve been fixing their socks for them. We’ve been doing team building, although that’s hardly necessary since we’ve all been doing football together for years, so we’re all already friendly. I’m surprisingly good at target training, If I do say so myself. I’m glad I’m good at something – It gives me a bit more confidence that I’ll be able to do every required once we actually get to the trenches. We’ve had to stand there for ages to prove we can observe the enemy, and we’ve done sniper training which I was good at as well and now I’m on the boat on the journey to France. Billy has already been sea sick, as he says the swaying of the boat is dreadfully annoying, and he can’t concentrate on anything, so it makes him ill. I actually find it very peaceful, and it’s almost lulling me to sleep as I write. I thought I would be nervous at this point, but i'm not. Maybe it still hasn’t sunk in yet where I’m going, what I’m going to do. Or maybe the strange calm is a bit of luck I've been granted.

Missing you already,

Charles Reeves.