June 11^th 1918

These past few days I have learned about the true horrors of war and what it truly is like to fight in trench warfare. For the past few days my company fought with the other allied forces as well as Americans to try to take control of the war by stopping Germany further advancements and any progress they were making. We met up with the Tommies in a place called the Ille de France in which the plateau of the Marne was. The British had already won a battle here just four years prior which prevented Germany from having any hope of a speedy victory in France. Now however us doughboys are itching to just be able to help defeat some Germans and turn the tide of the war in favor of the allies. The Germans sure have been looking more and more worn out and under-rationed in the last few minor skirmishes between us. Half of the time it seems as if the Germans are now just waiting for us to capture them so that the war would be over. Germany may be fighting a lost cause now that their soldiers have lost the hope of actually winning. My brigade leader, Corporal Young, ordered my group to attempt to sneak through “No Man’s Land” and spy on the actions of the German troops. As my small group of myself and three other men began our crawl in the dusk the Germans began a major artillery offensive trying to break up our front line, causing my group to seek cover in shell holes. As soon as that ceased, the Germans began to come over the top of their trenches to launch a major attack on our front lines. Since there was no time to retreat to our own trenches my group was forced to act as if we were dead in the shell hole until the German troops passed us on their attack through “No-Mans Land.” Miraculously for us a brigade from Company C of the United States Marine Corps launched a counter-offensive in which they flanked the attacking Germans catching them in the middle of “No Man’s Land.” Four different Germans were mowed down by these troops and fell into the same shell hole I was hiding in. All four of these Germans seemed to be staring at me through their death and begging me to do something. However these men were lost and I was forced to continually tell myself that they were the enemy and deserved to fall to their death. However, still I can not convince myself that these men were actually my enemy because one of them looked just like one of my friends from my old school. This supposed soldier was more so a child, seemingly no more than seventeen years old. This is a burden that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. The victory that we achieved at the Battle of the Marne is something that I will never be able to forget.

Yours, Charles Jefferson