Dear Diary

Yesterday we fought for the first time at the Somme. As much as I hate to admit it, I fear that this war will soon be over, in favour of the Germans. Our regiment has been cut down to only a tenth of it's size by the squareheads in but one day! The entire German line has got machine guns and howitzers that ground the Royal Newfoundland Regiment to bits. I still can't believe how horrible it was.

We could barely sleep all night, shivering with anticipation of a promised victory. Most of us awoke at the crack of dawn. All of the soldiers were built up and excited, although exhausted from the lack of sleep over these last months. We had been mentally preparing for this for days, maybe weeks, believing we would attack with ruthless fury and stomp the Germans into the ground. Val Adams and I relished every meal we've had this week and eating absolutely everything, despite the fact that everything reeks and tastes of onions. We need our strength. We had a rowdy night the night before the battle, people dancing and singing and being men. We could almost forget where we were, forget that our clothes were smelly and stiff with mud, forget that our bodies and hair were infested by lice, forget that we shared our sleep with vermin. It was good to forget for a while, to let the somber, ominous shroud of war slip off our shoulders and be people again.

I remember so clearly how we all cleaned and loaded our guns that morning, doing it not mechanically but as if we were once again excited to be fighting. It was like the old days when we were still naïve. I remember that fateful moment when one of the sergeants pulled out his pocket watch at exactly 7:30, as General Haig leapt to the top of the trench and began waving his cane wildly as a signal to attack. Tens of thousands of us stormed towards the Germans, screaming at the top of their lungs. I heard an earth-shattering blast behind me. I then turned and stared at a huge crater where the sergeant had stood. Himself and some others around him had been blown to pieces, and dismembered limbs littered the smoking hole. My body froze for a moment; I could not move or breathe. Then I vomited, and stood staring at the place where just a moment ago a living, breathing man was standing. At that moment the glamour and glory of war dissipated, and life's fragile reality was clear... we are not fighting machines, but men.

As bullets whizzed around me, people screaming and dropping like so many sacks of grain, I stumbled towards the crater, I knelt in it, beside one of the mangled bodies, feeling the dry heat of the earth. Some of the carcasses were in flames. The corpse I knelt beside was missing half of it's face and assorted body parts on the left side of it's body, but I knew who it was by the gold object cradled in it's hand. A pocket watch. Grimy, but surprisingly intact, it had stopped at 7:30.

I would have sat like that for who knows how long, if Val hadn't pulled me to my feet and slapped me hard enough to bloody my nose. He was seven inches shorter, thirty pounds heavier and eighteen years older than I, but this short squat man could be as intimidating as the strongest of us. He told me to pull myself together... that Canada needed us.

I don't remember too much else about the few hours following that, for I must have been in a daze. My memory returns to me when the sun was high in the sky and beating down mercilessly. Val and I were running like wolves, dodging and leaping over piles of bodies, running towards the place in the wire where Jerry Dysan had cut a space the night before. Val was slightly in front of me. We had almost reached the wire when another deafening blast, much closer now, knocked me flat on my back. When I woke up, I was covered in blood, but not wounded. I tried to move but couldn't, and soon I realized Val's body was on top of mine. I yelled and pushed him off; he landed in the drying mud with a sickening thump.

"Val," I whispered, "Val! Get up! We need to go... you said... Canada needs us..." my voice faltered as I stared down at his unmoving body and noticed the gaping hole in his midsection. Bile and blood were caked around his mouth, contorted into a grimace of pain and fear. I jumped up right away. I didn't want his stink of death to touch me. As I stood in the field and looked at my surroundings, I began to silently weep, for I was surrounded by people, but alone.