Life in the trenches

[SNARE DRUMS]

JACK: I don’t mind the rainy weather.

I quite like playing in the mud.

But I’d probably feel different if I was a soldier in the trenches during World War One.

WW1 SOLDIER JACK: Mud? Oh, we know all about mud here on the Western Front.

We’re living in it.

We’ve dug hundreds and hundreds of miles of these trenches.

They’re full of water in the winter.

Full of flies in the summer.

And full of rats all year round.

But they’re very important.

These trenches are the only thing stopping the enemy advance and, when we’re posted here, they become our home.

It’s like an entire town here.

We have operations dugouts to plan attacks.

We’ve built observation points to spy on enemy movements.

And if you’re injured you can treated at the medical post.

We get lunch from a cooking shelter.

It’s supposed to be meat and vegetable stew but my mate reckons we should fill the sandbags with it.

After repairing and cleaning the trenches in the afternoon we get the chance to grab some sleep or to read letters from home.

Reading them makes me feel happy and sad all at once.

But we can’t rest for long.

Soon it’s back to the firing trench because most attacks start at the end of the day, and we must be ready and alert.

I can see the enemy from here.

Imagine the length of a football pitch – that’s how close they are sometimes.

We watch each other as the sun goes down and all through the night.

And we think of home, our real home.

JACK: I can get out of the mid and the rain any time I want, but those soldiers couldn’t.

And lots of them never did get the chance to go home.