(for Barney, a friend and RAAF pilot and PoW)
"Think of the Fatherland. Thrust! Thrust!
Thrust your bayonets!
Club with your rifle butts! Maim. Maim. Maim.
Kill those who drop.
Los! Los! Los! In the mud."
Storm troopers rush this way then that.
They rush into trouble not there.
Brrrp! Brrrp! Brrrp! Machine pistol shots
and the Krankenwagon crawls through slush.
Vengeful, spiteful, machine gun and cannon shot blast
fling limbs and torsos of horses, people and dogs
plop, into the mud.
Old men, children, women and babies all in one mire
of soiled, smeared faces presaging haggard death masks.
Bodies sprawl each side among wildflowers,
bloated and burning.
Grim and grave, the company stagger, one by one
to a nearby barn as night closes in, a thin blanket
over field, autobahn and valley.
Even inside lies the trinity: mud, blood and stench.
Sludge unites pigs, cattle and wounded. It does not stifle
cries of the dying, sobs of the freezing.
Screams of Typhoons, indiscriminate,
swoop down on the refuge, spray
bullets, fling shrapnel.
The innocents rest and moaning, cry the war-weary question:
Why us Lord? Why us? Why?
But the bullets, rockets and bombs persist with their hot logic:
"Bury them! Now!
Bury them. Los! Los!
Los, in the fetid mud.
Author notes
Barney was a prisoner of war, captured by the Nazis. He served in the RAF, although Australian. He is still a friend.
He was a captured pilot of a spitfire. In 1944, he was marched with other RAF prisoners away from the advancing Russian troops through Lithuania, Poland towards Germany. German guards, PoWs and war refugees were victims of American fire by day and British fire by night, such is the illogicality of war. This, of course, for young people, is towards the end of World War Two.
I can guarantee from what he has told me that all of the above is deadly true.
A contest entry
- Memories of Sacrifice - Winklings #142 by Lyndon.
1750 points, ended November 17, 2008, 15 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Could this be you or one of yours?
Comments
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One can almost smell the death and destruction depicted in this poem. It is about the Nazi experience, but the carnage and brutality are facets of all wars since the dawn of Man.
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Thank you
for reading this and congratulations to the winners.
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Hard to imagine this. We can only hope it will ever stay a reality of the past. All the best.
In Remembrance.
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