This is the first entry of hopefully many. My name is Hanz McGuilicudy and I am 19
years of age and it is now our time to shine. My classmates and I were eager to enlist
and join the fight on the western front. Sense we came from a small Southern Germany
town we are eager to see some place new. We had planed to enlist as soon as possible.
The older men in the town are very proud of us for enlisting and they say that
they would go to if they weren’t so old.
The first day of boot camp was confusing and we were being shuttled from station to
station getting various things like hair cuts, clothes, boots, and so on. After that we
settled in and the training began. We went to the rifle range and this is where I became
a sharp shooter. All the hunting that I did with my friends has paid off. With my above
average marksman ship I have become a sniper. Now I get a new rifle with a scope on
it to allow me to see farther. So now I guess I won’t be fighting along side my friends
but at least I will be with them in the trenches.
November 14, 1916
The trenches are a dreadful place full of death and despair. There is a place even
worse than this though. It is where men turn into animals and do anything to survive.
This is the place that we call “No Mans Land” and this is what I spend most of my time
peering through my scope looking at. Across no mans land is the French army and I
have picked off many of them .
I often don’t think of me killing people more like me hunting just like I used to back
home. I also think of it as a form of amusement to watch how they fall when shot just
right. On occasion a man will try to rush out and save his commrad and I will pick him
off too.
December 8, 1916
The trench is flooded still today and I think I’m getting a case of trench foot. If I’m
lucky It will get me out of this place for a few days. I haven’t slept in the past three
days due to those wretched French shells. I belive my dugout was hit three time during t
the course of the three days but is still intact. I think they will charge our position soon.
Food is scarce and what we get our hands on we cherish every bite.
I am beginning to regret ever joining the war. Where ever I look there seems to be
death. In the last month alone I have shot twenty-five French men and one of their
shells ripped apart two of my friends while on an assault. That sent me on a killing
spree and I think I might have stayed up for four days sniping and I counted ten French
men, my friends on the other had said it was more like ten a day but I guess they were
just saying that because it was my birthday.
January 12, 1917
Looks like we didn’t end this war by Christmas and personally I’m sick of it We left to
the front with one hundred and fifty men and came back with forty-eight. Now that we
have finally been pulled back to get re-supplied It is time for rest. We now get three
square meals a day with extra rations so our bellies our full.
Back here we do not talk of the war but of what our old lives use to be like and what
we will do after it is all over. It’s hard to believe that someday it will be over and I just
can’t see my self doing anything else. Now a man of 21 I can’t return to school and
farming has never really been something I’m good at but I suppose I will find something
when I return home. That phrase still doesn’t sound right to me.
April 16, 1917
We are now back up at the front and are eager to fight. We are not in the same dugout
but this one seems nicer than the other for some reason. I think I’ve plucked off some
twenty British soldiers sense we have been here most of which have been at night. The
flares that light up the night sky are like another sun and help me pick off the British
soldiers cutting out barb-wire. The poor saps didn’t even know what hit them. Serves
them right too, they nearly killed me when one of their shells hit in front of where I was
sniping nearly blowing off my head so I guess I was pretty lucky unlike the new recruit
who was standing next to me at the time.
I ‘m also happy to write that I have been given some news that I will have leave to
return home for two weeks in three days. I can’t wait to go home and see my fam….
Hanz McGuilicudy
December 8, 1895 - April 16, 1917
Killed in action by British sniper