Friday, November 8, 2013

Diary of the damned: Never seen before, a lost diary of the Great War so brutally vivid you'll feel YOU are there in the trenches

Via WiscoDave

Casualty: Harry's diary described bringing wounded men back from the frontlines. The men pictured were fighting in the Battle of the Somme, where Harry also fought


  • Harry Drinkwater joined a 'Pals Battalion' when the war began in 1914
  • He was sent to the front lines and suffered the grueling realities of war
  • His diary entries, never before published, tell of his hellish existence caked in mud, deprived of sleep and endlessly confronted by the deaths of his friendsAfter volunteering as an Army private following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, former grammar-school boy Harry Drinkwater, 25, joined a ‘Pals battalion’ — so-called because the men were encouraged to join up with local friends and work colleagues.

    A few months later, his conversion from Stratford-upon-Avon shop assistant to soldier was complete.

    In this extract from his remarkable diary - which it was strictly against the rules to keep and which has been published for the first time - Harry writes about his brutal introduction to the trenches at the Somme in Picardie, Northern France...

    Thursday, December 16, 1915

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