Poetry Sample: The Second of the Two World Wars
War refuses to draw neat moral lines. This poem is my attempt, as a historian-writer-witness, to reckon with the universality of WWII’s brutality through a modern lens.
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The milk won't soothe our eyes
The metronome won't click right the
violin is out of key and
Bad Nenndorf and Seedorf, Operation Gemorrah
Toyama, Chenogne, Canicatti, and Teardrop
Leningrad, Aktion T4, Treblinka, Kyiv
Nemmersdorf, Grischino, ni shagu nazad!
Sankō Sakusen and 731, the March from Bataan
and I could go on and I could go on I could go on
and on and on and on
and never stop
Some crimes don't get tried some
Feuds don't get squared some
times you just call it even and forgive but
Don't forget
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Author's Note:
This poem makes deliberate reference to acts of brutality and suffering committed by multiple belligerents in WWII to underscore the universality of its horror.
Nazi atrocities cited include the systematic murder of Disabled people through Aktion T4; the extermination camp at Treblinka; and the massacre of Jews at Kyiv in modern Ukraine (specifically at the Babi Yar ravine).
Imperial Japanese crimes referenced are the Sankō Sakusen (“Three Alls Policy”), a brutal scorched-earth campaign used against civilians in China; the horrific human experimentation of Unit 731; and the notorious “Bataan Death March.”
Notably, the poem also deliberately includes Allied actions such as firebombing of Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah) and the near-total destruction of the Japanese city of Toyama by U.S. bombers. Also included is the massacre of Italian civilians by U.S. troops at Canicattì in Sicily, the Chenogne massacre in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, torture at the British interrogation centers of Bad Nenndorf and Seedorf, and the execution of fully surrendered German U-boat crews in Operation Teardrop.
Soviet atrocities are also referenced, including the massacres of German civilians and Wehrmacht soldiers at Nemmersdorf and Grischino, the brutal enforcement of Stalin’s Order No. 227 (ni shagu nazad! or “not one step back,” which led to Soviet officers killing their own men), and the catastrophic civilian deaths during the German siege of Leningrad.
Hawkeye in M*A*S*H said it best: “War isn’t Hell. War is war and Hell is Hell… There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them.”
