Journal WWI                                                   June 3, 1917             The stresses and life of war is so depressing that depression consumes your life. I have been here (I’m not exactly sure where “here” is) for about a month and whatever Kenny tried to tell me couldn’t prepare me for the destruction and cruelty seen before my eyes.               I watch men come in that have had there entire lower half of there body’s blown off by shells and bomb explosions. And yet they are still alive and breathing and talking and crying…the ones who can’t talk just cry. And I want to go over and just touch them and say everything will be ok but I am so busy caring for the men who might survive that I don’t have time to console those who are less fortunate. I thought I would come here and just bandage a few people and be able to see the sights a little. But I am kept here twenty-four hours a day and I am tending injured men around the clock. If I am not bandaging a man for a slight wound or helping a doctor out with an amputation or operation, then I am checking the men in the beds and trying to make them comfortable or having the orderlies take the dead ones away.              When I find a man in a bed who is dead there are always people to fill the bed with. There is never not a line. But I try my hardest to make sure that the man can’t be revived. What if he is just sleeping? What if he just fainted? I do not want to make the mistake of burying a breathing man. But after about five minutes of checking him, another nurse, probably Betty, comes over and says “Hurry up and get him out of here- there are 30 men waiting for his bed!”                But I always try to stay upbeat and have a smile on my face whether or not I know the man will die or survive. I mean, would you want the last face you see be a sad, gloomy face or a smiling beam of sunshine? I would prefer sunshine over gloom any day. But it gets hard some days. The food is bad, the water horrible, the conditions rancid. I wish that we had more money for more beds or supplies or something. But the way things are now, there won’t be any hope for the men here.              I’m glad though that the unit is a little ways away from the actual front. Actually we are pretty far back, but I am grateful because there are so many men already and I have seen so much death here that the front must be absolutely mad.            I wonder what I would be doing right now if I were home…I would probably be making dinner or helping mama with the laundry or talking to Kenny. I don’t have that many friends here because we don’t really have the luxury of sitting and chatting. Hopefully though, things will lighten up here and I will be able to talk some more with the nurses here.