Poets Of The Trench, Part II Lyrics

I remember sitting in the train. Though it seems ages ago, I figure that no more than a couple of weeks have elapsed since then.
I also remember the thoughts racing in my mind. I�d read that before going into battle, even the most ardent veteran soldier feels the pangs of fear, and I wondered why I only felt a sense of numbness in my stomach and legs. Premonition perhaps?

During training we�d been told by our senior officers always to keep our carbines clean of grime.
�Cleansed mine for what might have been the fiftieth time, whilst rolling through the French countryside listening to the distant thunder.
By then I didn�t realise that it was the mellow booming of the Germans� heavy artillery, shelling our line. Or, maybe, ours shelling theirs?

I�d heard that even if you�re dug in, in a shelter, the big howitzers could get you.

In the train I split a cigarette with a guy from back home. This was his second trip to the front. He told me how his former company was set to dig out a bombed cellar, and how the people they found had been uninjured by the shrapnel and fire. They had been crushed by the pressure of the detonation � their lungs had been pushed through their mouths.
He also told me to swap my bayonet for a field shovel at any given moment. �When you�re at close quarters, a sharpened field shovel can lob the head off a mans shoulders. And it won�t break or get stuck in the ribs like a bayonet.� That�s what he said.
His name is Liam, or was Liam. As I�m writing this, I can hear him screaming. I can just barely make him out in a crater next to the German trench. Horribly entangled in barbwire. He�s not screaming for his mom or anything. Just screaming. Maybe his throat has been lacerated. It sounds kind of gurgling. And he�s lost both his legs� Guess he won�t be screaming much longer�

God I wished that I had a grenade or something, so I could end his misery right now.

Well, even if I had a grenade, I doubt that I would be able to hurl it to him.
I�ve been holding most of my entrails back with one hand, since darkness fell.
Irony of ironies � the German that opened my stomach knew the trick with the field shovel, too.
Or maybe he wasn�t German at all. They have a Hungarian penal legion posted along the line.
Maybe he was one of them?
I crushed his head with my respirator canister. Never thought of that as a weapon, but in the heat of close combat, anything will do: I�ve seen soldiers gouge each other�s eyes with bare hands� And I saw a boy, no more than fifteen or sixteen, rip a Germans throat out with his teeth.

It is madness! Mere animals clawing at each other.

Now in the breaks between the drumfires, I can hear the enemy mustering in their trenches. I can hear the sucking sound of boots being yanked out of the knee-deep clay, and the dry clanging of a water-cooled MG being reloaded.
The next charge can�t be far off, and yet still fear eludes me. For the first time in weeks, I�m certain of what�s going to happen.

When the sun rises and hardens the clay, I�ll be here no longer. The same numbness I felt in train has returned, and I know my time is at hand.

Guess I�ll be screaming no more�.