Iniquity Poets of the Trench Part ii Lyrics:
[Lyrics: Fagerlind]

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
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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...
Lyrics: Poets of the Trench Part ii, Iniquity [end]