After three days of arguing the armistice was signed

in the French general’s private train

at a siding in the forest of Compiegne.

The Kaiser left for exile in Holland.

The military, unwilling to admit defeat,

still surrendered guns and planes.

 

No one told the people how bad things were.

A German corporal, recovering

after being gassed the month before,

a misfit whose life only made sense

in the trenches, blamed surrender

on socialists and revolutionaries,

 

treacherous tricksters; Germany

hadn’t really lost at all.

Comrades had regarded him as weird,

sat in a corner of the mess on his own.

Didn’t care about leave or women,

received no letters or parcels from home.

 

The railway carriage, displayed in Paris,

returned to the forest where it remained.

When world war resumed, with swagger

and swastikas the corporal received France’s

surrender among the trees, in the same

compartment; the misfit’s moment of revenge.