BERTOLT BRECHT AND THE GODZ by Ray Brazen Perhaps the eeriest number the Godz ever recorded was "Crusade," the leadoff track on side two of Godz 2. The free-form freakout of the piece's first half eventually gives way to the haunting voice of Jim McCarthy, singing, "Please send help, please... We don't know where we are, we are five and fifty on the call..." Though the songwriting credit is to McCarthy, Kessler, Dillon & Thornton, the actual source of McCarthy's lyrics represents a rare intellectual turn for the band � the words were adapted from the final four verses of the poem "Children's Crusade," by the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). Brecht's work, which represented his anti-establishment (and later, his Marxist) views on society, was quite subversive for its time, and didn't exactly endear him to Adolf Hitler. Within mere seconds of the Third Reich's takeover of Germany, he fled to Scandinavia, as a ban on all his works took hold. Written in the 1940s, "Children's Crusade" is the tragic tale of a group of children attempting to flee Poland following Hitler's invasion in 1939. The group starts small, but gathers strength as it marches through Poland, eventually growing to fifty-five children ("we are five and fifty..."), all sharing the same dream � to reach a world without war. Along the way, the hungry group captures a dog, with the initial goal of killing it for food. But they soon decide to spare the dog's life in hopes that his navigational abilities will help them to find safe harbor. Finally, as the children reach "towards what was southeast Poland," in a blinding blizzard, they meet their tragic end. In one last desperate attempt to save their lives, they attach a message to the dog's neck, and send it out in search of help. Two years later, the dog is found, near death, with the note still tied around its neck. At left are the last four verses of Brecht's poem, at right is Jim McCarthy's adaptation for Godz 2:

BERTOLT BRECHT'S "CHILDREN'S CRUSADE" "In January of that year, Poles found a starving dog, Around whose neck a placard hung �Twas tied there with a cord. These words thereon were: Please send help! We don't know where we are We are five and fifty The dog will lead you here. And if you cannot come to us Please drive him out Don't shoot the dog For no one else can find the spot. A childish hand had written The words the peasants read And since that time two years have passed The starving dog is dead."

JIM MC CARTHY'S VERSION (as best I can transcribe it off the record!) "When the moon's in darkness Covered by the call And love is in the mystery of the fall The worth of all Remembers the message and the call Please send help, please We don't know where we are We are five and fifty on the call The dog will lead you here To the place of the fall A childish hand had written the percival The words the peasants read, the fall And since that time two years have passed The starving dog is dead now The dog is dead now."

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