Dear Mom;

Words fail me, we’ve been gone now only two months and most of the boys that gradated basic training with me has passed on. Some now lay in shallow graves under the cool shade the few remaining pine trees offer. Others are now bound on train, there are the few allow to return home. Not in a physical sense as there alive and well but in a more spiritual sense . For I can’t help but think they left there coast villages and small old word hamlets as living men but are now only  neatly dressed  corpses.

Just above there breast pocket there sit’s a small collection of ribbons the army pins upon the fallen to give them a more heroic appearance. This war is nothing but a lie, a lie they tell young men to hate there fellow European.  But still I’m a solider enrolled in the service of his country.

Hence I shall stay, I shall fight  till the last ounce of strength has left my body and god has seen it fit to take my soul from the earth. Because her I’m not just another nameless solider, I’m a member of a select band of men. I’m a brother to the men in my squad. The three downward point chevrons mark me as there leader. I hold the fate of these men in my hands.

That is something no historian shall write about when this war is over, they shall only tell of the commands and of the battles won why skipping the ones lost. They shall not tell of the nameless solider that left the comfort of his home or traded his hammer of pen for a rifle. They shall not speak of the bounds of kinship formed by us soldiers.

And I fear most of all they shall leave out the playful teasing we often through at the Germans. And  of the many of football games we’ve played under a night with only two shell holds marking the goals. Mother I’m telling you these things because somebody must know.

They must know the truth behind the shadow of lies the government has weaved.  But there is a grain of truth in the newspapers, the boys in the Kaisers trenches are incuriously becoming younger and younger. I feel for the German people, they have fought bravely, they and there Russian Allies. They should not taste defeat nor should we ‘Hang the Kaiser and Behead the Tsar’.

Though, the few German news papers we come across in are trench raids are filled with such lines as, ‘The only good Englishman is a dead Englishman,’ or ‘The blood of the Nipponese will be used to water the blooming garden of the Fatherland.’.

Why so much hate, what so much hate in this the year of ‘Peace and Prosperity’ as are emperor  proclaimed twenty years ago. True I was just a babe in the cradle. But I still heard it enough each history teacher I took proudly boasted that we where living in a golden age. This was Pax Nappon.

Anyway, where about to over the top again. Pray for me mother, tell Sarah I love her, tell Jennifer she my sun and moon. Tell father, just tell him I love him. God keep you safe if I fall.

Jamie