Just Two Before the End

Inspiration: All Quiet On The Western Front

"It is over.

It is over."

They were shouting.

They were more than happy.

The morning broke without a sound.

It was silent, deafening, rather.

Nobody asked. No one knew.

Unlike other mornings.

No shells. No screams. Just frozen ground.

The sky hung low in ashen grey,

And smoke, like ghosts, began to sway.

As if the sky had fought and begged,

“Mercy, mercy,” to the land it fed.

But the earth stayed silent, still and proud,

Wearing silence like a shattered crown.

The sky swallowed every word alone.

It moaned in whispers, deep and grown.

Below a field of boots and bones,

Of bayonet ends and fire-stained stones.

But two souls danced with quiet joy,

A horrible, mystical joy.

Two hearts unbroken, hope unchained.

They laughed under that pale grey sky,

Their faces were bright, though not from light.

Not skylight, no, but something deep,

A hope too human still to keep.

As if the air had brought their mother’s scent,

Or lullabies the gunfire once had bent.

It was the kind of light that grief allows,

That flickers in a death-worn house.

One grinned beneath his battered lid,

And said, “At home, as I once did,

I’ll roast two geese on Christmas Eve,

With peas and wine… and she’ll believe

I’m done with war, and fear, and mud.

Just gravy now. Not smoke nor blood.”

He paused, then smiled with softer breath:

“We’ll have a child, or more, perhaps.

For Christmas is a hollow name

Without the noise, the mess, the games.”

The other laughed, then looked away.

His voice grew quiet, lost and grey:

“I’ll go back too, the pub, the crew,

The cards, the cheers, the midnight stew…

But I’m afraid. I’m scared, you know?

Because I’ll go there all alone.

The rest are gone.

I’ll drink and try not to discern

The filth I’ve crawled through, deep within.

Though truth be told… it won’t stay in.”

“Hey,” he whispered, “let me tell you a secret.

It is sacred.”

He smiled, the kind that cracks through war.

“I invite you to eat.

The geese, the wine, the gravy.

Eat this now, before it makes you greedy.

You are family.”

Then he reached into his coat,

And handed a loaf of bread,

Thin as skin.

They each had tucked against their chest

A folded truth from those who guessed 

That war is cruel, but tried, still tried

To warm the frozen soldier’s side.

Not flames. Not steel. But warmth.

Perhaps enough to stop a war

If only warmth had made the rules.

Soldiers come.

Soldiers go.

They come from homes,

From mothers’ hands,

From kitchens, chairs, and wedding bands.

They come from peace.

They pay the price.

They fight for those who feed them rice.

One letter sang of many things

Of wife’s soft hair and wedding rings,

Of Sunday mass and Anna’s sighs,

The lullabies of lullabies.

But he… he could not read.

And that made it

Even more tragic.

He held the paper like a prayer,

Kissing words he couldn’t hear.

The other’s ink was quick and bold:

“Oi mate, you better not grow old

Before you get a proper pint!”

With jokes and tales and raucous hints.

The words were rough, the spelling bad

But oh, the comfort that they had.

Both men had kept these scraps like gold,

More precious than the guns they hold.

More than life.

We say we don’t have time

To check a text.

To read a line.

But they had nothing left but breath

No time. No life. Just waiting death.

Somewhere in the pockets of their coats,

Those letters sat, like holy notes.

And when the shells nod,

They’d hold them like they held their God.

Their breath was pale smoke in winter’s chill,

Hearts wrapped in dusty amber, distant, still.

They dreamed in faded gold of laughter’s light,

Of voices once cherished, now lost to night.

A kitchen’s warmth, a pub’s soft glow,

A kiss beneath twilight’s purple flow.

A fire burning with burnt sienna’s low,

They clutch sepia brown, memories worn thin,

Haunted by the silence that settles within.

On the cold, worn slate of a home torn by war,

They stand as strangers, though they’ve walked there before.

But fate?

Not irony, no twist or jest.

But fate itself was forged of iron,

Heavy, cold, and merciless.

A shot, uncertain, fast, unfamiliar,

Small and late.

It cracked the calm and sealed their fate.

One jerked and fell without a sound,

His letter fluttered to the ground.

The other turned and tried to scream,

To tear apart this wicked dream.

But bullets don’t make space for peace and prayers,

He joined him in that trench of tears.

At last,

It’s eleven.

Bugles blew.

The war was done.

The peace was true.

Too late.

Too cruel.

The pact was signed,

Yet death had not been far behind.

Somebody came

Found them there,

Still side by side, in frozen air.

Two letters clenched in fingers stiff,

One tear-stained,

One with dried-out ink.

They died.

They lost.

They lost outliving death.

Did they make honor?

They don’t feel it.

They made peace long before them.

Do they have to?

Every time in history?

Do we honor them out of guilt?

Do we pity them because we lived?

What is it?

Selfishness, or love?

You show them engraved stones,

With lovely names

To whom?

The bird left the cage already.

It paid.

And you…

You became consent.

Back home, a child played in the snow 

A father’s boots, so worn, with Christmas glow.

A wife prepared the geese and wine,

Then looked out through the tangled vine.

A glass was raised in crowded bar

A toast to them?

They cried.

They forgot.

They forgot without shame, without guilt.

They knew.

They were taught.

They stopped

Because they were honored.

And that is the way of nature.

No names engraved in marble white,

No flags, no trumpets in the night.

No, there’s nothing here to celebrate.

They were lives that didn’t resonate.

They came,

They shattered.

Just two more gone, just two more lost,

Just two who paid the final cost.

One letter kept in a drawer where someone wept,

One read aloud through tears and beers,

Then folded shut across the years.

And still the snow falls soft and slow,

On dreams, on mud, on men below.

And the sun still rises in the east 

It shone brighter than before, at least.

Now the war is over.

The war was quiet at the end.

No farewell came. No word. No friend.

But a voice once said:

“This year, there will be wine and bread…”

But ghosts don’t eat,

And tears don’t mend 

Just two who died

Before the end.