Dear Dad,
I woke up this morning to face another day of horrible fighting. This war is so terrible and every day I see tons of people die. The only good thing that has happened in this war is all of the friendships that I have made. My soldier friends and I have shared experiences in the war that have brought us close to together. Unfortunately the war has caused the death of some of friends and this makes me unhappy. I hate being on the front and being in trenches because there is a chance that I might die and I don’t want to die. I have known people that have died while being in a trench or on the front and I am sad that they have died. The living conditions are terrible. On some occasions the enemy has gas shells. We have to put our gas masks on. “Inside the gas mask my head booms and roars. My lungs are tight, they breathe always the same hot, used-up air, they veins on my temples are swollen. I feel I am suffocating” (69). We have been fortunate enough that our trench has not been bombed. Many times we are in the trenches we are continually bombarded. “Our trench is almost gone. At many places it is only eighteen inches high, it is broken by holes, and craters, and mountains of earth. A shell lands square in front of our post. At once it is dark. We are buried and must dig ourselves out. After an hour the entrance is clear again, and we are calmer because we have had something to do” (107). The eating conditions are horrid. “We must look out for our bread. The rates