I have come to fear the nights in here as much as I fear the sound of artillery. It is bedlam when the lights go out and nightmares are relived. It always begins in the same way – the names of the fallen are screamed out, and too-late warnings are issued. Silence always follows, and then the sobbing begins. We cry for those we have lost, for the wounds we have endured, and for those we miss. I ask: Is this what it is like to be damned?

The day never seems to bring light and the air is thick with death. There is a brown stream of watery blood and mud which comes in from under the door, but I do not know if this is real or not. I spend my time peeling back the sounds; from the corridor I hear the people coming in and the bodies going out. In another ward I hear a man who is always weeping slowly, and past that the noise of engines as vehicles go back empty and come back full. The distant sound of explosions and gunfire remind me constantly where I am – Hell.

Of the seven I arrived with, three now lie in the morgue and a fourth has contracted tuberculosis. The other two I choose not to remember. I am not sure if they are still men. I am not even sure if I am. My skin feels metallic, my mouth tastes of mud, and my blood feels like acid. I scratch hard at my wounds so I can feel the pain.

The nurses, doctors and orderlies seem to float here, and I lay in my bed and worry that the monster which is grinding its way through the men out in the fields, will soon come for them. At night I hear them weep too, but each day they come back. They are braver than I.

I will not write to you about any of these things. Instead I will start my letter as I always do. I will ask how you and father are doing, how my younger brother is, and has he got in any more fights at school. I will then tell you how I am getting better and how I hope to be out of this place in four weeks. I will tell you how frustrated I am to not be at the front, and the sooner I’m back there fighting the better. I will then conclude on an amusing story or a comment about a pretty nurse, and sign off by saying how one day we will all be together again.

I will write this way, because I want you to be proud of me, to love me and to remember me. Without your loving thoughts in my mind, I would truly be damned.