The following is an imaginary diary entry of a Canadian soldier after the Second Battle of Ypres. I wrote it for part of my Canadian history assignment for this week.
May 5, 1915
I don’t know how I made it through the last few weeks. Maybe someday I’ll get through the horror of that first battle, but now it keeps playing through my mind; over and over again. Every time I close my eyes, I hear the constant fire, the whistling of bullets, the screams and groans of my friends. Yes, my comrades that keep falling because that’s what we’re here for. The only consolation I have is that we held the Huns back. Oh, but the gas was terrible. It glowed an eerie greenish-yellow, slowly gliding towards our trenches. It seemed to stretch out its hands to choke the air from us. It smothered so many. The silence that the mist made was terrifying as well; as though the guns were just a dream. Now even the grunge and smoke and dismal skies grate on my nerves and my mind. There is only rest for the dead. And one-fifth of our men are just that. Dead. Physically, I’m far away from the fighting field, but my mind I can’t control. But yet we stopped them!
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