& # 8211 ; Empathy Essay, Research Paper

Dear Mum,

How are you acquiring on? I hope that Dad & # 8217 ; s cold is better. Send my best wants to everyone!

I am composing to you from the barracks of our regiment. My preparation is traveling good ; I have many good friends here, and although the preparation I have been acquiring is necessary, I can non wait to complete it, and acquire out to the Front, because the opportunities are that the war will be over within a few months, and I want to acquire a good opportunity to hold my spell at the Boche.

All sorts of rumors are distributing through the regiment about the things that the Boche are making. They are supposed to hold committed all kinds of atrociousnesss in Belgium, such as slaughtering defenceless, guiltless adult females and kids, and besides ravishing and plundering.

I can non understand why anyone would non desire to take their topographic point in Kitchener & # 8217 ; s New Army ; it makes me angry that cowards should be able to duck out of their duty to their state. The whole thought of painstaking expostulation seems absurd to me ; it is merely a forepart used to cover cowardliness. Conchies don & # 8217 ; t object to war, they are merely scared that they might acquire hurt. They should see this war for what it is: a opportunity to assist and function their state, and gain some glorification, both for themselves, and for Britain.

The Boche needs to be taught a lesson ; they can non anticipate to merely process around the Earth, occupying states for no ground, other than selfishness. If we do non step in and move resolutely shortly, who knows where they will halt?

How can the ground forces act resolutely if many of the work forces who should be soldiers make up one’s mind to remain at place because they are scared?

Those who claim that their faith stops them from contending are in the incorrect every bit good ; I am a spiritual adult male, and God has said to me ( and I believe him ) that He agrees with our contending the war ; God is on our side!

Tonss of Love

End FIRST LETTER

Dear Mum,

I am composing this missive to you from one of the support trenches, about half a stat mi back from the front line. I am regretful that I have non been able to compose decently to you for the past few hebdomads, but you can likely think how it is out here. Everywhere you look, dead organic structures are stacking up, as we ( our battalion ) sit here, there is an about changeless flow of dead and injured soldiers from the forepart. When you hear about the glorious triumphs achieved by our male childs, Don & # 8217 ; t bury that we are losing work forces excessively ; it is so cheerless to hear the Numberss at axial rotation calls bit by bit traveling down. Whether you, or the adult male who is following to you dies, and besides when it happens is wholly random, there is no justness to it ; great work forces, generous, cheerful work forces, who are visible radiations to us all, they merely disappear without warning, merely like everyone else.

It is impossible to acquire any existent slumber here ; yes you can close your eyes, and name that being asleep, but you ne’er truly relax ; there is ever the fright tarriance over you that the Boche might infest the trenches at any clip, or that the ageless boom of the shells crashing down on the trenches might get down to travel in this way, and the whistle missiles might get down banging into the land around you, throwing mountains of Earth into the sky, or let go ofing their deathly ladings of choking, blinding, gas into your lungs. Sometimes you do non take your boots off for yearss and yearss on terminal, and when you do, you suffer from Trench Foot, a decomposition disease.

The conditions here are worse than you could conceive of ; when it snows, it is so bitterly cold that rather a few of us acquire gangrene. But the worst thing is that by and large the drainage in the trenches is atrocious & # 8211 ; when the snow thaws, it has nowhere to travel to, the land is already soppy, and so immense puddles build up. But they are non normal puddles ; they have a consistence like golden syrup, and in topographic points they are so deep that it is non unusual for injured Tommies who fall into them to submerge, particularly if they are seeking to do their ain manner to a first assistance station.

I expect that we will be sent back up to the front-line trenches in three or four yearss. The ambiance in the trenches merely before the order is received to travel over the top is about the most cheerless conceivable & # 8211 ; you look about at the work forces who you are functioning with, and you realise that this may good be the last clip you see some, or all of them. The figure of casualties we sustain in this action is the highest of any of the action we perform. The land in no-man & # 8217 ; s land is more like gum than golden syrup, because it is churned up so frequently by the shells that rain down on it. You are supposed to progress calmly as a line, but the line breaks up rapidly, as work forces fall from machine gun fire, or bead behind because they can non travel through the thick clay. Then we reach the razor wire, which is supposed to hold been cut by shellfire, but barely of all time has, so you have to halt, and pick your manner through it. While you are making this, you

are a sitting duck for Fritz’s machine guns. If you do take the Boche’s trench’ so they will likely counter-attack within the hr. The whole rhythm repeats infinitely.

Some of the Tommies, upon gaining the regretful province of personal businesss that exists here, resort to acquiring a ego inflicted & # 8220 ; Blighty & # 8221 ; & # 8211 ; a lesion that is serious plenty to deserve their return to Blighty ( hence the name ) , but non serious plenty to do any lasting harm. You may believe that such behavior is apprehensible, given the fortunes, but I urge you to keep back any compassion you may experience for them, because they, like Conchies, are merely cowards. Their class of action could be seen as even more cowardly than that of Conchies & # 8211 ; They are abandoning their portion of the combat, and increasing the load upon others, who are supposed to be their friends.

Conchies, though, are the worst without exclusion ; they openly disapprove of the war, they claim that their scrupless forbade their fetching portion in the war, and besides from assisting in the mills, because that would be promoting the war attempt. Yet they are more than happy to eat the nutrient that has been brought to England for the state by crewmans who risked life and limb to convey the nutrient to them from abroad past the Boche and their mines, and ships.

How are you and Dad acquiring on at place? I hear that the Zepp. foraies are acquiring rather bad around you. All that you need to make is to pray to God ; by a miracle, He has kept me safe and alive here, and if He will make that, so He will certainly guard you if you ask him to.

We were all so ill-conceived and naif to believe that the war would be over every bit rapidly as by Christmas, but I think that this war can non travel on for much longer ; we are bit by bit forcing Fritz back, and we have been told that they have been taking far worse casualties than we have. I think that the Boche will acquire fed up of this war before we do.

Pray to God that He should maintain me safe here until the Boche admit licking, and I will pray that you and Dad are kept safe from the Zepp. foraies.

Tonss of love,

END SECOND LETTER

Dear Mum,

I am still in the St. Mary & # 8217 ; s Nursing Home in Broadstairs. They say that I have about wholly recovered from the injury, and I should be able to go forth this topographic point within the following two months. I think that I should be impatient to go forth, but being here gives me a batch of clip to believe & # 8211 ; make I truly have that much to go forth for? I know that I will ever hold you and Dad, but have I truly returned to & # 8220 ; A Land Fit for Heroes & # 8221 ; , as had been promised by the politicians?

The state to which we have returned seems to be an wholly different one to the 1 that we left & # 8211 ; when we left, the state was full of enthusiasm, we were encouraged to enlist & # 8211 ; so, anyone who did non enlist for service was made into a outcast. The state to which I have returned is recession-hit, and scarred by conflict. No-one here can even get down to understand the loss experienced by all of the Tommies who fought. That is non their mistake, it is impossible to understand how it feels to watch your best friends deceasing one by one, and being wholly unable to forestall it, or the fright that the following onslaught of the Boche might be the one where a slug hits you in the caput, that that you might non do it back from the following violative, or that possibly you won & # 8217 ; t be killed but merely be left stranded in no-man & # 8217 ; s land, with one of your legs blown away, that the following shell might detonate on you. That this minute might be your last.

Very few realise that the cicatrixs carried by Tommies are non merely those from amputations, but besides from the things that we saw, and heard. The uninterrupted drumming of the flood of shells that continued for four old ages has sent big Numberss of Tommies mad. The evil shells that spewed mustard gas into our trenches will be remembered for of all time by those who saw them and their effects. Work force who are in this nursing place still kick that the baneful gas has caused them lasting harm, they say that their hearing has been impaired, or their seeing, or their external respiration.

What am I supposed to make upon being discharged? I have been trained merely in how to kill, but I couldn & # 8217 ; t stand up to a life in the ground forces. I have killed adequate people for one life-time. What sort of occupation can I acquire? I couldn & # 8217 ; t travel and analyze books now, non after what I have seen and done.

For four old ages, I have lived near to all of the friends I had in the universe ; the friends changed, but the chumminess was ever the same & # 8211 ; now I have no-one in the universe apart from you.

The loss is non merely my ain. The state has been robbed of an full coevals of immature work forces, and what have we accomplished, in return for this great loss? We are called the victors, but what does that intend? Have we really won anything? It feels as though we have been betrayed, non merely by the politicians, but by everyone.

Yours,