Hi folks!

There are some people who do not understand this song well, because their political persuasion glues their eyes, unfortunately. This song is no lyrical praise of dying in combat, but a deep experience of the human soul with death - why he, why not me, why now? It exactly fits into Graves' definition of great poetry which only knows 3 themes: Birth, love, and death. Therefore this poem written by a German professor was so rapidly adapted by the common man. It is not only played at burials and memorials of uniformed people in Germany, but by civilians also. It shows how death plucks your friends away at random, in a moment, while you are (still) spared. When I went out to a mission with the fire brigade we found a driver in a standing car dying of a heart attack. We tried to resuscitate him, then the medics came, but they could not save him. It was a friend who had played with me in the same fireman's band, this evening. When we lowered his coffin into the grave, the song of the good comrade was played. Whenever I hear it, I remember him especially and my father (KIA before I was born) with tears running profusely. I think the worst experience is in the 3rd stanza: The survivor can't even give a last shakehand to his dying best buddy because he has to execute the cadence of the firing drill. Imagine that!

Wilfried