War letter

Dear mother,

Remember those three thousand men who where mustered into service at the courthouse of those, only one thousand can stand and shoulder a rifle. I’ve been offered a commission once this whole ordeal is done. I shall become a gentlemen because I have shot down fifteen men in cold blood, and in a fit of madness shot one of my own who where fleeing. Are section held mother, and much to the praise of dear Erin who’s sons spent there good blood to enrich this pissing piece of earth.

It took us only eighteen hours mother by train to reach Kyoto, then we told to form up into formation, then with kettle drums beating, bag pips blaring we where marched down the broad cobblestone avenues of the capital. Then into the skillet we where tossed.

In the first hour, we lost three hundred men, there bodies have already been collected and they are now being taken home, those are the lucky ones, because they flew into the open arms of there fathers. They will be buried in there home Parish and there names remembered by all.

We who lived through that those first hellish hours, who not only stood and took the rifle fire of the advancing germen columns, but turned them back, turned them back tripping over there own dead. Now must face the cold hard truth, the war is yet won. And we may not live to send the end of it.

Thomas is dead mother, Thorn is dead, David is blind. Those three boys mother, those three where as you know childhood friends. Words fail me, I’m very troubled over Thomas death. I held him mother in my arms, as he bleed out. I promised him mother, I promised him we’ll see the war through like brothers. And now he is dead, deader than dead, cause he took a burst of machine gun fire to the chest.

But, Thomas died under the silken banner of are regiment. Under the dark green ivy silken banner of Erin, Thomas died. That very banner still stands before us, a reminder of are Celtic roots, and the fact we’ll never truly be accepted here.

Dear mother, I wish not to live much longer after tasting battle, indeed through acts of valor I unknowing performed, I’ve been award a medal. I wish to die here, under that blessed banner. For how can return to the ways of peace, when so much has happen.

Nobody talks of the suffering of the solders, its not easy to shot a man down in cold blood, and to shoot the poor chap walking closely behind him, and the other one. It takes a toil, the priest are no help, they only tell us to put are faith in god and in are cause.

What cause mother? What are we fighting for, why are we even fighting. Many of the enlisted here are farmers and simple tradesmen. How does them being here till the good earth, how does them being away from there shops turn a copper? It does not.

If I return to life, I feel I should never know peace. Those who die here are held as ‘Hero’s’ those who life are referred to as ‘Human Cattle’ such is the world we live in. Till next time mother.

Sgt. James W. Bell 22nd Rifles.
Penned in a captured German Trench seventeen miles from Kyoto.