They had us out again for 48 hours [in the] trenches. . . . After the shells, after a day of them, one’s nerves are really absolutely beat down. I can understand now why our infantry have to retreat sometimes; a sight which came as a shock to me at first, after being brought up in the belief that the English infantry cannot retreat.

[We are] in a dripping sodden wood, with the German trench in some places 40 yards ahead. . . . We had been worried by snipers all along and I had always been asking for leave to go out and have a try myself. Well, on Tuesday . . . they gave me leave. . . . Off I crawled through sodden clay and trenches going about a yard a minute. . . . Then I saw the Hun trench. . . . So I crawled on again very slowly to the parapet of the trench. . . . Then the German behind me put his head up again. He was laughing and talking. I saw his teeth glistening against my foresight, and I pulled the trigger very slowly. He just grunted and crumpled up. . . .

[Something similar happened the next day.] I went back at a sort of galloping crawl to our lines and sent a message to the 10th that the Germans were moving up their way in some numbers. Half an hour afterward, they attacked the 10th and our right, in massed formation, advancing slowly to within 10 yards of the trenches. We simply mowed them down. It was rather horrible.

Source: Laurence Housman, ed., War Letters of Fallen Englishmen (London: E. P. Dutton, 1930), 119–20.

It has been extremely interesting to study the contents of the letter-cases of French killed and prisoners. The question frequently recurs, just as it does with us: “When will it all end?” To my astonishment I practically never found any expressions of hatred or abuse of Germany or German soldiers. On the other hand, many letters from relations revealed an absolute conviction of the justice of their cause and sometimes also of confidence in victory. In every letter, mother, fiancée, children, friends . . . spoke of a joyful return and speedy meeting — and now they are all lying dead and hardly even buried between the trenches, while over them bullets and shells sing their gruesome dirge. . . .

War hardens one’s heart and blunts one’s feelings, making a man indifferent to everything that formerly affected and moved him; but these qualities of hardness and indifference towards fate and death are necessary in the fierce battle to which trench warfare leads. Anybody who allowed himself to realize the whole tragedy of some of the daily occurrences in our life here would either lose his reason or be forced to bolt across the enemy’s trench with his arms high in the air.

Source: Philipp Witkop, ed., German Students’ War Letters, translated by Anne F. Wedd (London: Methuen, 1929), 278–79.

There is no likelihood of our getting rest during the winter. I am sure German prisoners could not be worse off in any way than we are. I had to go three nights without sleep, as I was on a motor lorry, and the lorry fellows, being Europeans, did not like to sleep with me, being an Indian. [The] cold was terrible, and it was raining hard; not being able to sleep on the ground in the open, I had to pass the whole night sitting on the outward lorry seats. I am sorry the hatred between Europeans and Indians is increasing instead of decreasing, and I am sure that the fault is not with the Indians. I am sorry to write this, which is not a hundredth part of what is in mind, but this increasing hatred and continued ill-treatment has compelled me to give you a hint.

Source: David Omussi, ed., Indian Voices of the Great War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 336–37.