Albert Einstein

That’s the way trench warfare worked though.

Still, I had a lot to be grateful for, given the circumstances. The war had progressed over a period of months and, obviously, years, in which time I’d seen soldiers mentally destroyed by the deaths of their comrades. Men literally offered themselves to the gunfire after watching their best friends… or even relatives die next to them. However, I’d signed up for the army on my own. I didn’t have some of the same emotional attachments as the other guys in my regiment… or at least not from the start.

“That young Chambers guy copped a blighty one last night,” whispered Private Fuller, as he crouched down beside me. “They’re sending him home today. I don’t think he’ll last the week though.”

That’s Private Jon Fuller. He’d grown into one of my best ‘friends’ on the battlefield – he depended on me for support more than anyone, I guess. Our relationship started round October, 1915. I found him shaking in a pool of his own sweat at the bottom of the trench with half a dead body on top of him. He was a fantastic soldier, but had only just been called up to ‘front line’ action and had tasted blood for the first time. I offered him a cigarette… which was pretty much considered the ultimate offer of friendship and pulled him out of the mud. The rest is history.

“Chambers? God damn it,” I said, with the shake of the head. New casualties were as frequent as the sun set. However, death was simply something you could never get used to it. One day you’d see someone fighting beside you and the next they’d be rat food at the bottom of the trench. Life’s a bitch like that.

“There’s rumours afloat that the end is close though,” proclaimed Fuller, as he wiped a speck of dirt from his face nonchalantly. “I don’t buy it though. How many times are we going to have our hopes raised only to have them crushed? The only chance we have of survival is if Haig is removed from office. Other than that, we’re fuckin’ dead men.”

Jon hated the Germans just as much as I did. However, from our point of view, it was the British Government that had proved to be the greater evil of the conflict. Field Marshall Haig had sent thousands of soldiers to their untimely deaths with a series of tactical errors that would never reach the British media. Word had passed around that Haig had sacrificed thousands of men at the Battle of the Somme in a vain attempt to go ‘over the top’. It was a suicide mission… and tales of treason were definitely doing the rounds across the front line.

“We can’t give up hope,” I replied, grabbing Jon by the shoulders and looking him dead in the eye. “It’s all we’ve got.”

Looking down at the carnage, I knew that if Jon’s head did in fact drop then he’d be a dead man. Depression killed more soldiers than gunfire – and Fuller had never been what I’d consider a ‘strong’ individual. War is the most mentally draining situation that any individual could ever wish to be placed in. It seemed as if the years of torment were finally taking their toll on Private Fuller too.

That was one of my final memories of wartime because shortly after staring at Jon Fuller’s disheartened face – peace was achieved. Thank God. It was over. No more rotting corpses. No more empty shells. No more Germans. I’d live to tell my Grandchildren about fighting for their freedom after all. I had a chance to educate people and teach them that war is wrong.

World War 1 was billed as the ‘Great’ war. It was the ‘war to end all wars’… supposedly. However, no sooner had I returned to my homeland than I realised that ‘peace’ would never exist. After all, peace is simply the period of nothingness that separates one war from the next.

Despite everything I’d achieved whilst fighting in France, I returned to my wife Claire in 1918 expecting a hero’s welcome. I expected the world to learn from its mistakes and I expected that our victory would solve all previous problems…

I’ve never been as wrong in my life.