I Am Often On Guard Over The

The Music Enchanted The Air. It Was Like The South Wind, Like A Warm Night, Like Swelling Sails Beneath The Stars, Completely And Utterly Unreal... It Made Everything Spacious And Colourful, The Dark Stream Of Life Seemed Pulsing In It; There Were No Burdens Any More, No Limits; There Existed Only Glory And Melody And Love, So That One Simply Could Not Realize That, At The Same Time As This Music Was, Outside There Ruled Poverty And Torment And Despair.

At School Nobody Ever Taught Us How To Light A Cigarette In A Storm Of Rain, Nor How A Fire Could Be Made With Wet Wood-nor That It Is Best To Stick A Bayonet In The Belly Because There It Doesn't Get Jammed, As It Does In The Ribs.

The Days, The Weeks, The Years Out Here Shall Come Back Again, And Our Dead Comrades Shall Then Stand Up Again And March With Us, Our Heads Shall Be Clear, We Shall Have A Purpose, And So We Shall March, Our Dead Comrades Beside Us, The Years At The Front Behind Us:—against Whom, Against Whom?

We Are Not Youth Any Longer. We Don’t Want To Take The World By Storm. We Are Fleeing. We Fly From Ourselves. From Our Life. We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces.

Monotonously The Lorries Sway, Monotonously Come The Calls, Monotonously Falls The Rain. It Falls On Our Heads And On The Heads Of The Dead Up The Line, On The Body Of The Little Recruit With The Wound That Is So Much Too Big For His Hip; It Falls On Kemmerich's Grave; It Falls In Our Hearts.