Click Here for a YouTube video in the original German of Die Moorsoldaten.
As we march we look around us,
Peat and bog on every hand;
Not a bird to break the silence,
Shriveled bare the oak trees stand.
We are the peat bog soldiers,
Marching with our spades to the bog.
Up and down the guards are prowling,
No man, no man can get by;
Walls of fire can build their fortress,
Try to flee and you will die.
We are the peat bog soldiers,
Marching with our spades to the bog.
Thus our thoughts lie homeward, homeward,
Back to caring child and wife;
Oiled by their deep-ended keep,
We march as we pay deep for life.
We are the peat bog soldiers,
Marching with our spades to the bog.
Put away with desperation,
After clouds there comes the rain;
One day comes our liberation,
And our home is ours again.
No more the peat bog soldiers
Will go marching with our spades to the bog.
No more the peat bog soldiers
Will go marching with our spades to the bog.
####.... Original German lyrics: Wolfgang Langhoff and Johann Esser (1933); Music: Rudi Goguel and later adapted by Hanns Eisler and Ernst Busch. ....####
This variant arranged and recorded by Ryan's Fancy (Dark Island — A Portrait Of Ryan's Fancy, trk#5, 1971, Audat Records, Oshawa, Ontario).
Variants were also recorded by Theodore Bikel (From Bondage To Freedom, 1973); Paul Robeson (Songs Of Free Men: A Paul Robeson Recital, 1997); and Pete Seeger (Songs Of The Spanish Civil War: Vol.1, 2006).
Notes from the Learning From History program in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany: Translated from the German, Die Moorsoldaten is one of the best known songs of the political resistance movement against National Socialism. Its forceful lyrics and folk melody have established it as an important historical source. There are different accounts of the song's origin, the reason for which may be that its authors gave only vague accounts of its origins after their release from imprisonment so they would not endanger those still in concentration camps. All accounts of the creation of the song agree that it was composed in the summer of 1933 at the Börgermoor concentration camp, close to the town of Papenburg in the Emsland region. Börgermoor was the first of the Emsland Moor concentration camps, a chain of fifteen camps built in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1938, and known collectively as the Emslandlager. Conditions in the camp were especially brutal and the song was written in response to brutality by camp guards. The camp commandant prohibited prisoners from singing Die Moorsoldaten because of its last line. Nevertheless, the song spread rapidly and was transmitted by prisoners into the expanded German concentration camp system, where it continued to be sung after 1939 to become internationally known. Langhoff, Eisler, and Busch were all active in the German Communist party. The YouTube video below features an excellent performance in the original German by Raymond Crooke of Melbourne, Australia.
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