War Diaries (October 19) (nonfiction)
War Diary entries for October 19.
Previous: October 18 - Next: October 20
Diaries
Pierre Minault: October 19, 1914
It’s again Sunday, they say. Nothing has changed. Ah, but yes. Yesterday my demotion from sergeant was confirmed because of the incident concerning my diarrhea. It is a hardship which bears it’s own remedy, because if I am demoted, I am also in a new company and I can leave behind this cowardly, Breton captain, a disgrace to his rank, the mere thought of whom causes me to shudder with hatred. I walk quietly through the woods to my new company and find myself in the trenches at the edge of the woods. They receive me quite well and the same life starts all over again.
This trench life is really rather simple, free of much effort, slow and amorphous. We are here, in one place, we eat a little to subsist, we sleep a little in daytime, and less at night. We must keep our eyes peeled for hours on the beetroot fields in front of us, because from these fields, 300 meters away, could at any moment spring waves of attackers and a rain of bullets. Sure they could, but nothing happens. It is a war of enemies staring at each other, and days and weeks go by. My body, emaciated by dysentery and starvation is a constant burden, too long for the narrowness of the trenches and too tall also to contain in my veins the warmth which would dispel the glacial winds of the long nights, it is constantly stiffened by cramps, shaken by shivers, and wracked with pain.
The nights are fearful because they bring on the cold. They prolong each day; but the day does not bring back any warmth
