More than a century ago, the front pages of the Daily Echo pulled back the curtain on the grim theatre of war. Readers were granted an unflinching, first-hand insight into the grisly reality of trench life, as told through the powerful, private words of a soldier on the Western Front.
This unvarnished account was secured in the form of a letter home to his family, sent by an anonymous officer in the Hampshire Regiment from an undisclosed, dangerous location in France. The narrative was startlingly graphic, shattering the distance between the comfortable home front and the deadly front lines.
The account began, immediately drawing the reader into the officer's perilous moment:
“It is a ticklish job getting these Germans out of the villages. They have studied the art of defending them with some zeal, and are certainly masters at the art.
“Their chief joy is to leave a few men with machine guns in the upper rooms and without taking the slightest notice of small reconnoitring parties to await the arrival of something more solid and then open a heavy fire from the upper windows of the narrow streets, which created a difficult situation to cope with.
“However, we are beginning to learn their ways, and a judicious application of dynamite by a wary patrol to the foundations of the houses which have been discovered to be occupied had produced excellent results, and a rapid end of a good number of these devils, whose behaviour in places we passed through defies description.
“One begins to wonder where the iron discipline you hear so much about is. They are the most unscrupulous, and certainly the filthiest people you can possibly imagine.
“In one area we occupied for three weeks the trenches were really comparatively comfortable, and with the exception of occasional outpost affairs the heavy fighting one read of in the papers did not come off in our part of the line.
“After the first few days, during which we were heavily shelled, we had an experience none of us have ever dreamed of.
“If you can imagine 290lb shells coming along, six at a time and bursting all round you, you will grasp the situation, but your imagination will have to be a vivid one.
“These are what are now known as “Black Marias” or “Jack Johnsons”, although our name for them was “Aunt Sallies” and of course they do not form part of a field army’s equipment.
“Normally they are brought up for the hoped-for bombardment of Paris, which, having fallen through, necessitated their withdrawal to the walls of Antwerp, heckling us en route.
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“We saw one of these “Aunt Sallies” strike a field gun and throw it, with its limber, bodily 30 yards, while three men in the trenches nearby met with a similar fate.
“Two of them had to be swept up, which sounds cold-blooded, but is literally true, while the third, who was dug out of the trench in which the shell had buried him, after a rest seemed perfectly fit.
“A few days later, however, he went into hospital and died of bronchitis.
“It is impossible to describe the terrifying nature of these heavy guns, and after seeing one village within 100 yards of us plastered with them, one does not want to see another.
“Every window in a church was smashed with one exception – a beautiful old stained glass east window depicting the Tree of Jesse.
“Clothes are beginning to wear out, and few of us have sound-elbowed coats, but still that is a small matter.
“I have been exceedingly fortunate lately, and had two baths in the last week, one in a chateau and one in a lunatic asylum! The joy of feeling really clean is indescribable.”
