We Were All At Once

The Miracle Has Passed Me By; It Has Touched But Not Changed Me; I Still Have The Same Name And I Know I Will Probably Bear It Until The End Of My Days; I Am No Phoenix; Resurrection Is Not For Me; I Have Tried To Fly But I Am Tumbling Like A Dazzled, Awkward Rooster Back To Earth, Back Behind The Barbed Wires.

We Are Not Youth Any Longer. We Don’t Want To Take The World By Storm. We Are Fleeing. We Fly From Ourselves. From Our Life. We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces.

The Room Shall Speak, It Must Catch Me Up And Hold Me, I Want To Feel That I Belong Here, I Want To Hearken And Know When I Go Back To The Front Line That The War Will Sink Down, Be Drowned Utterly In The Great Home-coming Tide, Know That It Will Then Be Past For Ever, And Not Gnaw Us Continually, That It Will Have None But An Outward Power Over Us...nothing Stirs; Listless And Wretched, Like A Condemned Man, I Sit There And The Past Withdraws Itself. And At The Same Time I Fear To Importune It Too Much, Because I Do Not Know What Might Happen Then. I Am A Soldier, I Must Cling To That.

Strange How Complicated We Can Make Things Just To Avoid Showing What We Feel!

Katczinsky Says It Is All To Do With Education - It Softens The Brain.