[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 thunderBy 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 mouthsHe 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 saidHis 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
himI've been holding most of my entrails back with one hand, since darkness
fellIrony of ironies - the German that opened my stomach knew the trick with
the field shovel, tooOr maybe he wasn't German at all They have a Hungarian penal legion
posted along the lineMaybe 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
reloadedThe 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