Memories of orange afternoon sun
Burning gold rays into mist
Such a sight of beauty beheld
Guns and bombs are hardly missed

There is such a gas that burns the lungs
My ears heard months before
But my body believed not in such hate
Before the burns of war

The roar of engines soared from above
A cry of warning before the storm
I had hardly a moment to breathe
The walls of my trench move, deform

Never before has my imagination torn
The edges of evils like these
And never before could I imagine death
Be carried on such a breeze

The moment I saw the hazy air
I jumped to my feet in shock
And out I surged from my home of mud
Choking, I could not walk

A man knows not panic
Until he cannot breathe
As a man cannot know war
Until bullets he lays underneath

To this day I remain unsure
If it was tears of poison or pain I wept
But I laid and watched my men retreat
In the moments before I slept

Memories of orange afternoon sun
Burning gold rays into mist
Such a sight of beauty beheld
Guns and bombs are hardly missed