絵はがきから作成しました。英詩も併記しました。
戦 友
Comrade in Arms
(1)
We are here in Manchuria,
Hundreds of leagues away from the homeland
Under the red glow of sunset,
My comrade rests under a stone in a far-off corner of the field.
(13)
This evening, with the moon shining in a perfectly clear sky,
I pick up a pen with a keen feeling of pity,
And describe the details of my comrade's last
In this letter to be sent to his parents.
(2)
How pitiful it is to recall him
Running headlong at the enemies before anybody else,
Chastising them one after another, just until yesterday
Is that brave warrior now sleeping here?
(14)
While writing it with my poor handling of the pen,
I am so deeply affected by the thought of
the feelings that his parents will experience
When they read it by dim lamplight,
That I cannot stop a drop from falling.
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(12)
I had never imagined this would happen, that only I
Would survive the war by a quirk of fate,
Or that I would dig a grave for my comrade
Under the red glow of sunset in Manchuria.
(10)
After that, we got so friendly that We shared even
a single cigarette and Even letters we received.
And We exchanged stories of our respective lives
day after day.
(7)
After the fight is over and the sun went down,
I returned to search for my comrade,
With a desperate heart,
wishing to find him to be alive,
And able to speak.
(8)
But my wish was in vain! His body had lost its warmth,
and his soul
Already gone back to the motherland.
Only, in his pocket,
His watch was still active, ticktocking,
To my intensified grief.
(5)
Hearing occasional battle cries accompanying charges,
The comrade barely turned his face up to me,
and said with tears in his eyes,
"Don't tarry here with me. Please go!
You have to fight for the sake of our motherland!"
(6)
While my heart was lingering behind him,
This body of mine should not stay.
"All right, I'll go," said I, and parted from him.
Was this our parting forever?
(3)
Ah, in the midst of the fight,
The comrade, who was beside me then,
Abruptly collapsed.
I rushed to his side before I could stop myself.
(4)
While the strict military discipline prohibited it,
How could I abandon him in this state?
I raised him in my arms, crying, "Hold on!",
And put a makeshift bandage to his wound,
amid a hail of flying bullets.
(11)
We used to say to each other, each putting
his arm around the shoulder of the other's,
"I have no hope to survive this war, so
Please take care of my bones when I die."
So friendly we had been.
(9)
In retrospect, I met him first the last year on the ship
On the Sea of Genkai, when it was so far offshore that
The motherland went out of sight.
We shook hands and exchanged names.
1905年（明治38年）の作詞・作曲
哀調を帯びたメロディーです。
歌詞は軍歌らしからず悲哀に満ちています。
日露戦争が舞台である。
地図は当時の日本の進出を示している。
