A couple more for good measure
A couple more for good measure
Both of these are Leonid Seriy.
Atheist
He looked as if chiseled from stone,
Nothing of him loose or meek
He was our new lieutenant
(The old one got killed last week)
All his movements were measured,
He was tall, strong, and fine,
He was an adamant atheist
And threw away a cross of mine
Next morning, our new commander
Climbed up to look at the Kraut
Apparently, some German armor
Was waiting for him to peek out
That thing, a giant, rattling horror
Already sinking in the mud
Rotated in our rough direction
And fired off a single round
Explosion sent our leader flying;
He landed next to where I lay
And kept just muttering some prayer
And crossing himself the wrong way
…
When air is filled with high explosives
And chaos reigns the field, supreme
When you are almost out of ammo
And did not have time to dig in
When the right flank has started running
And through the wounded, panicked wails
You hear the German tanks approaching
And no one has any grenades
When life and death are nothing special
And honor, glory are just words
When someone’s head flies through the air
And down into your foxhole rolls
When there’s a counterattack signal
And you rise up to meet the Krauts
And trying to climb out the trenches
Keep slipping back on someone’s guts
And in a hopeless hand-to-hand
You are alone against the world…
The war is scary, very scary
There - atheism is just a word
(this one is **** translation but hey the story is good)
In ruined town right next to Berlin
With final victory in sight
We met another group of Germans
And went at em with all our might
And those guys stubbornly defended
Their bunker, final in their war
They must’ve figured at that point
They had nowhere left to go
And from those ruins, where moving by a hair
Would often have consequences most dire
A girl had calmly walked into the square –
From German side, into our line of fire
Dressed all in white, an almost childlike angel
A memory from days long gone
She walked around, oblivious to danger
And looked for something, maybe her lost home
I thought, while hiding underneath some dresser
“My God, this sure won’t end good”
But then we heard the Germans shout “Nicht Schissen!”
And our Sergeant barked the order not to shoot
We shifted into comfortable postures
And someone even lit his pipe
Who knows – maybe those peaceful seconds
Had actually saved somebody’s life
All of a sudden, a familiar whining,
A noise that we all knew too well –
A ground attack plane, fast approaching
From German side on city fell
The Germans shouted from their bunker
We screamed “Get down, its gonna blow”
From both sides, people ran to cover
Her with their bodies from the bombs
And then this idiot in Messer,
Not seeing anything through smoke,
Dive-bombed the area at random
And hit the German’s city block
The bricks and chairs rained around us
And bloody mud flew to the skies
When dust had settled, girl has vanished –
Like angel, flown to paradise
Both us and Germans started getting up
Appearing like mushrooms from the ground
Forgot we were supposed to kill each other
And gathered what we could, and made a mound
We stood around it, many wiping tears
Some swearing, some muttering to God
I desperately wanted to get ****faced
And German Unteroffizier cried out loud
We stood there for some minutes, without moving
When our Sergeant finally went to speak
He simply said “Curse those that started fighting”
And Germans understood – and nodded: “Scheisse Krieg”
Although by now it’s been a good long while,
This pain has always stayed with me;
And every time I meet a girl in white -
I hear a faint smell of TNT
This one's a greatly shortened translation of a poem by Ion Degen (T34 TC)
I know I'll never make another Pushkin -
Can't really rhytme, can't even write too well.
At least I won't be killed flintlock in a duel -
But in my turret, by an armor-piercing shell
Best wishes,
Daniel
