A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

by G.J. Meyer

A letter that Private Jack Mackenzie sent to his wife in Scotland on July 3 illuminates life on the line at a time of little action. “We relieved our fourth battalion in here, these are the trenches which they lost so many men in capturing, & is just one vast deadhouse, the stench in some places is something awful, the first thing we had to do was dig the trenches deeper & otherwise repair them & we came across bodies all over the place, you know the Germans occupied these trenches nearly the whole winter and have been losing heavily & has had to bury their killed in the trenches, there were legs and arms sticking out all over the place when we arrived but we have buried the most of them properly now. The ground behind us us [sic] is covered yet by dead Camerons and Germans who fell on the seventeenth of May & we go out at night & bury them, it is a very rotten job as they are very decomposed, but it has to be done.” Mackenzie (who would be killed in action in 1916) goes on to thank his “own darling wife” for sending food and clothing by mail, regretting only that a recently received pair of pants was not some color other than white. “But many thanks dearest for sending them,” he added, “they will do fine.”