All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Cherry

By marandina

Tue, 11 Aug 2026
  • 203 reads
11 comments
 

An homage to Siegfried Sassoon & the War Poets

 

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Fight for your people, your country and king,

Fight to do service, fight for the right thing,

Fight for the righteous, sun shining down,

Fight for your badge of honour and renown.

 

Don’t think of the blood, guts and gore,

Think only of glory, the vainglory of war,

Don’t think of drones hovering overhead,

Think only of killing, killing stone dead.

 

War for the committed, loyal and brave,

War is no place for a coward or knave,

War is for the strong, selfless and true,

War is our reset, our chance to renew.

 

No time to think, ponder or breathe,

No time to stew in anger or seeth,

Ours not to question or to ask why,

This is our duty, to fight and to die.

 

But if you did stop, to think about war,

Would it be the darkest bleakest tour?

Trying to make sense of senseless death,

Too many having taken their last breath.

 

Many lives lost who heeded the call,

Many lives lost, no longer stand tall,

In this modern age, this age of debate,

Surely we consider this perilous fate.

 

Realisation dawning, it’s not about us,

Misdirected guilt of our consciousness,

The wealthy win, it’s the poor that lose,

Medal-lined coffins, we sing the blues.

 

Image free to use @WikiCommons

 

Certificate 12
Poem
Miscellaneous Poems
Spiritual

Comments

Submitted by Makis on

Hear, hear, marandina

Caveat emptor they said in the snug

It's nothing to do with us

They were the ones who signed the pact

Sealed the deal and passed the Act

Let them pursue the glory

Contorting the truth, inventing the story

That dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori

 

 

Submitted by marandina on

Thanks for reading, Makis.

It's a very long time since I studies the war poets at school. Sassoon, Owen et al. It stands the test of time and remains relevant. Amazing to think that trench warfare is the main tactic in the Russia-Ukraine war. 

 

Submitted by insertponceyfre... on

Words that will strike a chord with many - thanks for sharing Marandina

 

Submitted by marandina on

Thanks for reading, insert (and for the cherries)

It's another poem written a couple of years ago when I was in a creative writing group. It needed a few edits to make it fit for purpose on here. Disappointing that after all the things the war poets railed against and opened people's eyes too, the carnage continues and for the same reasons. Territory and power.  

 

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

Always so messy, and tragic, and hardening. Tragically there has to be confrontation sometimes, but the issues can get very confused and peace-makeing very difficult. We see minor hatred quarrels in our every day life, and how stubborn and mistaken some are of their 'enemies'. Rhiannon

 

Submitted by marandina on

Thanks for reading, Rhiannon. All valid points. When will things change for the better? 

 

Submitted by Turlough on

World War One’s eastern front is near to me. Gallipoli is only a six-hour drive from here. I should go one day. But in a century conflict has moved on as drones and missiles replace trench warfare. And as a consequence it’s even less likely that the people who start the wars will be harmed and even more likely that ordinary people do all the suffering, as you mention in your poem.

And I can think of nothing worse than the genocide in Palestine that goes on day after day with the world looking on and doing nothing. Hypocrisy and greed will kill us all. War is in my mind every day. It sickens me. And it could be avoided almost every time.

Thank you Paul for sharing your poem.

Turlough

Submitted by marandina on

Thanks for reading, T. What's been happening in Gaza and Ukraine are both human tragedies. The former is particularly awful when you see that the entire Gaza Strip seems to have been reduced to rubble with children foraging for food and the like. We can only hope that those responsible finally face a reckoning. Notwithstanding, there are many conflicts ongoing around the globe. The misery continues. 

 

Submitted by celticman on

ah, war, that old beast. So familiar. So far away. So they say. 

 

Submitted by marandina on

Cheers, CM. War is far away and yet it's on our doorstep when you realise the consequences that ripple outwards. But you knew that already.

 

Submitted by David Kirtley on

I remember feeling the horror that War (and ethnic cleansing, rape, and concentration camps, and snipers shooting civilians!, and of course the Srebrenica massacre) had actually come back to haunt Europe, in Yugoslavia, and Bosnia particularly, in the early 1990's. I realised that we (the modern world hadn't really moved on from racial/national tensions and latent savagery. At that time I still had a belief in the innate decency of our own European and American leaders, which was eventually confirmed in the Bosnian peacekeeping intervention and NATO finally getting tough with Milosevic?Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs. They settled a war and brought a workable peace. We/NATO etc avoided getting sucked into full scale wars, but used our muscle to keep the peace.

Unfortunately that belief has all but evaporated more recently. The realization that the US was not merely getting rid of a very nasty Dictator Saddam Hussein, but actually wanted to get their hands on Iraqi oil, and didn't have a proper plan for Iraq after occupation was tough for me. 

But I never expected the West would fall so low as to elect/allow a vicious thuggish madman like Trump and his rich backers to destroy the American Empire from within, or to allow the blatant ethnic cleansing and genocide which is Gaza, and now ongoing in the West Bank, and now in Southern Lebanon as well without firing any warning shots at Israel. We know why America has joined/is working for the extremists in Israel, but Europe and the rest of NATO and the UN have done absolutely nothing significant to reign in Israel. They haven't even issued a boycott or sanctioned Israel. Where are they? There should be UN peacekeeping armies in the West Bank and on the border with Lebanon, facing off against Israel's tactics. Nothing! 

We are so disappointing, we are doing nothing. We didn't learn the lessons of World War 2 properly. I suppose we have learned a lesson from WW1, which is not to actually fight if we can help it!

Great poem! The lessons of WW1 are still relevant. We don't want to get sucked into real hard war, to lose our individuality and control over our own future. Peacekeeping and preventative actions, negotiations and sanctions, are all usually better ways, if we can make them work, and international alliances and understanding. But we should not allow fighting to take place or be intensified, just for the sake of rich investors making money from weapons manufacture or oil. That is why our democracies should be preserved and kept strong, so that the power does not fall back too far into the hands of rich and profitseeking corporations.