On request of my writing, so that people may fairly criticize me too. Obviously, this is based in WW1. For those of you who don't know, or are just plain American, much of WW1 was spent in trenches during long standoffs. The paragraphing in this is quite notably awful... I'm too lazy to fix it... just assume Mr.Hodges wasn't a very well educated man =)
A Letter from the Trenches
To my dearest family,
I miss all of you very much. With all of the terror going around me it becomes difficult to remember what you all look like, much less the country I am here to fight for.
Life in the trenches is nothing like I could have imagined. It’s a filthy place with no shortage of giant rats; if one were to open his eyes he would without a doubt see at least one rat. Not only do we have to share our hole with these vermin we also end up sharing our food with them. I woke up after an extremely short sleep only to find one nibbling away at my last piece of bread. No matter what I do I can’t seem to get rid of these pests. They’re literally everywhere. Not only that but the smell is overwhelming, with fallen comrades just over head it’s hard to ignore. There are times when I cannot even sleep because of the smell. The sound of screaming comrades who have been shot is even worse than all that. To make matters more frustrating I am unable to help them for fear of being shot on the way to get them. I am forced to simply wait for them to drift off in NO MAN’S LAND. The sound of gun fire is non-stop. I am scared beyond belief just to pop my head above the trench to shoot at the enemy. Yet it is all I can do to protect myself without artillery support. At night, even when the moon is hidden the battle field is bright from the constant fire of weapons. I am only able to get in two to three hours of sleep before I am either forced into combat or awoken by the chaos roaming around me. Perhaps even more frightening than all of this is that we are not so different from the people whom we are killing and being killed by. We are all following orders and have been forced into this terrible event, it makes one wish that we could somehow take a break from the fighting and resolve this some other way. However, when I see one of our men screaming in pain I seem to forget all of that and replace it with a deep hatred of our enemy. Some of our men are so scared that they are unable to fight with any sort of success. I don’t know why some are affected more than others but I certainly can’t blame them; this is without a doubt, hell on earth. I can see no clear end to this battle, it looks as if it will never end and that I am doomed to stay here for the rest of my life.
If I do make it out of here alive, I shall return home to you immediately. Enduring this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
Sincerely,
Gerald Hodges
Sorry about choosing a school assignment I did last semester, but I don't write stories for fun at the moment, and the only thing I've done this semester is write some essay about why people need Laws. I felt this assignment was slightly more interesting and perhaps enjoyable for the reader.
Cheers,
It's alright. I've read All Quiet on the Western Front, so this was nothing new to me. You should probably check it out - it's a fantastic read. I'd like to see a bit of prose from you, if you ever get the chance. This is written much like a letter would be, which is to say fairly bluntly.
However, it was Germany that often lacked artillery support, especially near the end of the war when their resources simply ran out. That's part of the reason they were so successful in World War II. Their Blitzkrieg opened up all of France for supplying the Wehrmacht and other aspects of the German war machine, not to mention Italy and Africa also supplying them with war materials and troops.
In World War II they were confined to Germany, Austria, and the forever weak Ottoman Empire.
I was just reading up on Napoléon's campaigns, and it appears that he was defeated more than once. However, it was essentially France against all of Europe at that point, so it's amazing that he did as well as he actually did.
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However, it was Germany that often lacked artillery support
They had shrapnel. Not that I even mentioned the Germans had artillery. In this situation you're to assume it's pre-creeping barrage. The Germans were still winning at the time (because of plainly stupid tactics of running into machine guns with all your men). I don't remember how much artillery was available in the early stages of the war, I think it took awhile to mobolize it...
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This is written much like a letter would be
T'was the assignment.
What do you mean by prose? Not essay format, and just a short story?
Just think of stuff that you would read for pleasure (assuming you don't like reading plays, poetry, or textbooks). Think of... normal books, like Harry Potter.