After Combat

In the sky the howitzers no longer explode,
The cannoneers rest next to their guns.
The infantry pitch tents now,
And the pale moon slowly rises.
On yellow fields in red trousers, the French are ablaze,
Ashen pale from death and powder.
Among them German medics squat.
The day becomes grayer, its sun redder.
Field kitchens steam.    Towns are put to the torch.
Broken carts stand at roadsides.
Panting cyclists, hot and tanned, loiter
At a scorched wooden fence.
And orderlies are already moving
From regiment to division.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Alfred Lichtenstein was a German poet and writer known for his expressionist works. Born on August 23, 1889, in Berlin, he studied law at the University of Berlin. His works often reflect the grim realities of early 20th-century Europe and the senseless horrors of World War I. He volunteered for military service at the outbreak of WWI and was subsequently killed in action on September 25, 1914. Lichtenstein's legacy lives on through his poignant and often haunting poetry.

Alfred Lichtenstein

Going for a Walk

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

In the Tuberculosis Sanitarium

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

Twilight

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

The Battle at Saarburg

Alfred Lichtenstein, Simple Poetry

English

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Monday in the courtyard of the barracks

The heat sticks closely to the gun and to the hand.
It pricks the eyes.    Nothing remained forgotten.
The troops stepped, half drunk, into the fire.
The non-coms stand rigidly in front.
The glaring earth is a dead carousel.
Nothing stirs.    No one drops down.    No streaked sky flies.
Only rarely a hoarse barking tears apart the blue sow
Which lies on the stone barracks.
Now the army leaves me alone.
Who still pays attention to me.    They got used
To my strange civilian eyes long ago.
On maneuvers I am half dreaming,
And as we march I compose poems.

But war comes.    There was peace too long.
No more good times.    Trumpets screech
Deep into your heart.    And all the nights are burning.
You freeze in tents.    You're hot.    You're hungry.
You d...

Alfred Lichtenstein

Trench Duty

Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take,
I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then
Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men
Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light.
Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right
Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare
Of flickering horror in the sectors where
We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled,
Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.
"What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?"
Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:
Why did he do it? ... Starlight overhead -
Blank stars. I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead.

Siegfried Sassoon

Trench Duty

Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take,
I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then
Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men
Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light.
Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right
Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare
Of flickering horror in the sectors where
We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled,
Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.
"What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?"
Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:
Why did he do it?... Starlight overhead -
Blank stars. I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead.

Siegfried Sassoon

Counter-Attack

We'd gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
    The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
    High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;
    And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
    Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
    And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
    Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.
    And then the rain began, - the jolly old rain!

A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
Staring across the morning blear with fog;
He wondered when the Allem...

Siegfried Sassoon

Aftermath

Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same, - and War's a bloody game,...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz, -
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench, -
And dawn coming, dirty-wh...

Siegfried Sassoon

Prelude: The Troops

Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
The stale despair of night, must now renew
Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.

Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
That hastens over them where they endure
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for ...

Siegfried Sassoon