Letter to my Dear Parents (LLCE)

Sunday 2 July. 1916                                                        
2.30pm        

                                                                Henry O’Brien Wellington
British Fourth Army, VIII Corps, 29th Division
86th Brigade, 16th Battalion, B Companies of Middlesex Regiment
France, Plaines du Nord, Somme

To my Dear Parents, Roland and Rose O’Brien Wellington,

                        I will not come back home.
Letters are no longer being sent since one week I think, I don’t remember the time anymore, we all lost the track as the communication’s thread with the exterior.
All I know is that this piece of paper will not reach you, it never will.
I know this and yet, I wish to write you one last time.

Our British Army wanted to attack in Belgium but the French demanded an operation at the point in the Allied line, soon after our both armies met the Boche decided to attack at Verdun, aiming to wear down the French in a battle of attrition, thus in an attempt to break the stalemate on the Western Front and relieve the pressure on our allies at Verdun the General Sir Douglas Haig placed under the pressure of the Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Rawlinson ordered to launch an offensive on the Somme earlier than planned.
The British Fourth Army was aim to break through in the centre, the Third Army in the north and the French Sixth Army to the south to make diversionary attacks. If successful, the Reserve Army, including cavalry, would have then exploit this gap and rolled up the German line. The General Haig’s battle plan was simple and quite optimistic but we overestimate our firepower.
It began with a seven-day preliminary bombardment, as planned our artillery were supposed to destroy the German barbed wires and us, eleven divisions of infantry were supposed to rush over and occupy their trenches, nevertheless, it seems that we also underestimate their formidable set of defences.
I was a part of the second wave of our unity, the 16th Battalion of the 86th Brigade.
The first wave attacked at 7.30am on 1 July. 1916, in front of us were running the 2nd Battalion of Royal Fusiliers as thus the 1st Battalion of Lancashire Fusiliers. At the same time our artillery increased in intensity, the German guns then opened up on the No Man’s Land, it was a veritable inferno. We left the trenches at 07.55am and had already reached half way to the Boche line but the barrage, which was supposed to take us to the enemies’ trenches, was so intense that the German had the time to set up their defences and open fire. We were soon met by the same storm of machine-gun, rifle and artillery fire that witnessed the first wave. What a bloody butchery.
We were about to reach the wires but couldn’t get any further, it’s where I got touched. I remember seeing just before fainting my comrades falling one by one just a few feet away from me, blood splashing in the air before laying on the No Man’s Land muddy ground as in all directions I heard pitiful groan and cries of pain, heavy and dreadful artillery shots’ sounds.

I woke up the next day in the infirmary, this assault cost me my right hand and injuries at the abdomen and on both of my legs. My wounds are all infected, the nurse told me I only have a few days left before my existence will also rot away as all of my brothers that I am seeing at this exact moment in front of my eyes, looking like Egyptian mummies.
It’s not classy, alas, it’s war.
After waking up I just stared into the ceiling and cried like I used to when I was a child. Instead of your motherly perfumed embrace or your warm fatherly gaze, the smells of disinfectant and death are now surrounding me. Until the end.
This battle that my own self witnessed yesterday’s morning is simply and purely a massive muddy grave.
I want this scene over. I am fed up with this war.
As a soldier, your identity is at first turned into a little pathetic pawn until the hazard called human stupidity sacrifices you, then right after it becomes ashes, totally forgotten. Our worth as an individual human being is now meaningless, I will be soon replaced by another pawn as thousands of others had been, are and will, and so until the checkmate. I am feeling so useless now.
To my little dear brother William O’Brien Wellington, tell him that his brother went to the Great War and died as a hero for the British Empire. And above all, make sure that he never goes into the army so that he doesn't die as a fool like me.
Brothers or enemies, soldiers or nurses, men or women, adults or kids, we are all only and absolutely just humans living in the same damned world but a war is happening a few feet away. How? Why? Just why? We turned this world into a place so dark and so evil. The realisation is heavy and I am dying. I am so hurt. So hurt and sorry.

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