We signed our names, and the schoolroom shut. The younger years were taken, boot, bone, gut. Beneath the duckboards, mud keeps its own score, bread, lice, orders, shellfire, nothing more. The front is not a place, but a way of being worn, We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men! Gas comes, breath held, masks bite the face. A crater, a body, too near, too human, too late, to kill is to carry what you cannot unmake. The boy who went out is gone, and cannot stay. All quiet on the Western Front! A report, a stamp, a phrase for the file, while we lie in the trench, in the stench, in the while! All quiet on the Western Front! All quiet on the Western Front! The war has ruined us for everything, All quiet on the Western Front! the guns keep their counsel, the dead do not come again! October came, the sky was bright and clean. A quiet day inside the vast machine. No rescue left, no ladder, and no fear, just a peaceful report that tells them, nothing here. Leave us the bare field, leave us the rain, the grave in the trench and the name in the rain! Comradeship is all we have left in the shell-lit night, then even that thins to ash and sight. Let it end! Let it burn! All quiet on the Western Front! A report, a stamp, a phrase for the file, while we lie in the trench, in the stench, in the while! All quiet on the Western Front! All quiet on the Western Front! The war has ruined us for everything, All quiet on the Western Front! the guns keep their counsel, the dead do not come again! Let the months and years come, they cannot take anything from me anymore. All quiet.
