Lost Youths

Slumped in my crater, I lay
Along with my comrades, my friends
In the muddy spring of May
As the rain slowly turns to sprinkles.

The grass and beauty are long gone
In place are the ugly trenches and shell-craters
Inside them are many soldiers, Tommy and Fritz
The bodies of the souless living and the lifeless dead.

All the boys, younger than twenty-one
Sent to the lines, by some ill-will
Taken from their mothers and homes
Given a uniform and taught to kill.

We ran through the green haze of gas and Hell
We sprinted across, sent to our deaths
We danced with the bullets and shells
We suffocated in the gas, dancing with Death.

Our bodies were lost in the midst of the shelling and the gas.