"Wildgänse rauschen durch die Nacht" (Wild geese rush through the night) is a war poem by Walter Flex.
It was published in 1917 in his collection of poems Im Felde zwischen Nacht und Tag [de] (In the (battle) field between day and night).
Götz's melody existed as early as 1917[1] and the song became popular among members of the Wandervogel movement / Bündische Jugend society during the late 1920s.
The inspiration for the poem is described in his memoirs The Wanderer Between Two Worlds: I was lying as a war volunteer on the forest clearing plowed by grenades as I was a hundred nights before as a listening post and stared into the flickering light of the stormy night which was criss-crossed by the restless spotlights on German and French trenches.
Over helmet tip and rifle barrel it sang and whistled, cutting, shrill and plaintive, and high over the hostile armies, which lurked opposite to each in the darkness, went with razor-sharp cry a migratory grey geese flight northbound.
Without seeing my intertwined lines in the darkness, I wrote on a scrap of paper a few verses: ..."[4]The Wanderer Between Two Worlds achieved great popularity in Germany.
Wildgänse rauschen durch die Nacht mit schrillem Schrei nach Norden.
Fahrt ihr nach Süden übers Meer – was ist aus uns geworden!
—Poetic translation Wild geese are rushing through the night With shrilling cry northbound their heading – Attention, take care!