Diary entry
Location-Battle fields/Flanders fields
Date- 25th April 1925
Dear diary,
The shooting finally stopped this morning, but the quiet feels heavier than the noise. We lost half the members yesterday. It was a giant mess of mud and barbed wire, and I’ve got a shard of glass in my arm that won’t stop throbbing. When I was brought in, I saw Nurse Sarah. Even under her mask, you can see the exhaustion in her eyes. She didn’t complain, but the way she moved slowly, like every step hurt ,This tells you everything you need to know. It’s hard to tell who is more broken, the boys on the stretchers or the women trying to save them.
The waiting is the hardest part because the time seems to move so slowly while you are sitting there in the dark. My arm is pulsing with a steady heat and every beat of my heart makes the pain from that glass shard flare up again, making it impossible to find any position that feels even a little bit comfortable. I keep watching the nurses as they move from bed to bed in the dim light, and it is clear that they have not slept in days because their shoulders are slumped and they move with a heavy tiredness that they cannot hide anymore. Even when they are not speaking, you can feel how much they are carrying, yet they keep going back to help the next person who calls out for them. It makes me feel bad to complain about my own injury when I see how hard they are working to keep everyone alive in this crowded place. The air is thick with the smell of old bandages and mud, and the only sound is the low murmuring of voices and the occasional groan from across the room, which makes the whole hospital feel like a place where time has just stopped for all of us.
I finally managed to close my eyes for a short while, but it wasn’t restful sleep. It was just a heavy blur, full of the sounds from the day mixing with the quiet groans of the night. Every time I drift off, I see the faces of the men we left behind, or I feel the jolting terror of the shelling starting up again. It makes me jumpy, and I wake up quickly, my heart hammering against my ribs, only to remember I’m safe, for now, in this tent. The darkness doesn’t help because it lets your imagination run wild. You start thinking about home and everything you miss, and those thoughts hurt more than the glass in my arm ever could.
I look around at the others. We are all just waiting here. Waiting for the doctor, waiting for the all-clear, waiting for the fighting to end, or maybe just waiting for another dawn. We share nothing but this silence and this fear. There’s a young lad next to me, maybe seventeen, and he hasn’t said a word since I got here. He just stares at the ceiling. I want to tell him something helpful, something brave, but I don’t have the words left. The nurses keep giving us small, kind smiles, which are the only bits of real sunshine in this whole awful place. Those small smiles are what we hold onto. They make you think that maybe, just maybe, everything will be alright once we get through this long, dark night.