Palatina la caduta

The true story of the trenches has never been told. I know, because for many months I have lived in trenches. I have slept daily in dread of bullets, shrapnel, mines, and gas and man-eating rats.

Who has seen hell? If Dante's madness was truth, and those 7 circles were 7 encircling battle lines in Northern France, I could stand up and say there is no agony of body or mind which I have not seen, which I have not experienced.

Did you ever breathe air foul with the gases arising from a thousand rotting corpses? Have you ever fought half madly through days and nights and weeks unwashed, with feverish rests between long hours of agony, while the guns boom their awful symphony of death, and the bullets zip-zip-zip ceaselessly along the trench edge that is your skyline—and your deathline, too, if you stretch and stand upright?

Have you ever seen a thousand men hurled to atoms by a giant blast? Watching the whole earth leap skyward, and through the black mountain of earth and stones mixed with heads, arms, legs, and torn fragments of what were once heroic men?

You couldn't believe what I have seen.

I have seen men so terribly wounded, enduring such agonies, and screaming so heart-breakingly for somebody to kill them, that our boys did what they asked, to save them the unnecessary horror of living dismembered.

All the slaughter of heroes have passed before my eyes. And I, Roméo Houle, am forced to write this:

Man is given life to enjoy it, not to destroy it. We cannot make ourselves better or the world we live in more worth while by killing each other like beasts gone mad. I thank God that the nightmare is over. Only in my dreams do the cannon roar over the line. And such dreams are quite terrible and real enough. I hope never to fight again.

- Pvt. Roméo Houle, 4th Co., 14th Battalion, 65th Reg., 3rd inf. Brigade, 1st Canadian Division

Här är mörkt och här är kallt
Här är dysterheten allt
Allt är fruset allt är dött
Anden bruten själen trött

Grånande ruiner, en iskall vind som viner
Ingen framtid, inget hopp

Gå din väg, gå din väg, gå din väg
Här är allt förlorat
Gå din väg, gå din väg, gå din väg

Här är allt förlorat