August 12, 1916

I tried to escape it. I ran all over the country. My common sense was in a battle with my sense of duty, which was as unbearable as the French revolution. I was in a different city every week. I was so close to leaving the country, just to escape the draft. I mean who are they to take away my freedom and force me to march to my death. But then I thought of the shame. What good would that life be? My fear and dishonor would block out any ray of hope provided by the sun. So I let myself become drafted. They took me in. I considered failing the health inspection on purpose, but the shame loomed ever beside me. I was so scared the day I was deployed. I was afraid that I would have to go to the front line. My worst fears were confirmed when I was sent to an infantry company out at our boarders to fight the German soldiers. I am a young man only 18 and I have had no combat experience. This brings us o the here and now. Today we reached the trench where we are to stay until the battle ends. I have no clue how long this will last. From the way the men talk it seems that I have just entered the pit of hell. Some time tonight (I'm not sure when, because none of have watches) I heard my first gunfire and war explosions. I can't bear to write this and I pray no one finds this when I am dead and gone but when I heard that blast I swear to god I wet myself. Right now the commander is calling us over, I think I will be moving to the front lines in a few hours. That is where the fighting is really occurring. Oh god I hope I live. I need to live.

November 20, 1916
I don't care any more. I have seen too much. Any decent man would have had the courtesy to die by now. To think that I thought shame was leaving the country to escape the war. No. Shame is crying in the middle of the night when all that you have to hear your pleas are the decaying corpses inches below you. But they don't care, they just laugh. You can hear them laugh, but it is drowned out so often by the growling of your angry intestines. Shame is getting a twitch in your eye or a spasm in you gut just because once you stabbed a man in the exact same place. But even now shame is disintegrating. No complex emotions can overcome you when you're faced with such primal urges. Once in a while though, in the depths of the night when your shields are lowered from weariness all those putrid feelings rush at you like a fresh horde of demons. I used to consider these demons the spirits of the Germans I killed but now I know they have no need to haunt me I do a superior job myself. All this fighting has left a scar that covers every inch of my body and soul but only I can see it. It is an arrangement of every wound I ever inflicted on another man. I used to ask to live. Then I asked to die. Now I ask nothing, I deserve to live with this horror, I earned this myself.

March 6, 1918
I made it through, as I knew I would. God would not let me off that easy. Of coarse there are pieces of me scattered all across France and Germany. But not body parts. No, I could not be blessed with the gift of losing something material like an arm or a leg. I must face fellow soldiers who are missing half of their body, as a full man. But the truth is that I'm not a full man. Shell shock is what the doctors told me. But what do they know. This is not shock this is profound realization. I can't write any more but I have to, I deserve to hurt.

Men at War

Soldiers on the eastern front.
Men in trenches.

A man suffering from shell shock.

Sources

BBC history- shell shock

Life in the trenches