"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 ' (In the (battle) field between day and night). The poem was also included in his 1916 novel ' (The Wanderer Between Two Worlds).
The lyrics achieved popularity through a musical adaptation written by . Götz's melody existed as early as 1917 and the song became popular among members of the Wandervogel movement / Bündische Jugend society during the late 1920s. It is also sung in the Austrian, German and French (as "") army.
The date of creation of the lyrics are unknown. The inspiration for the poem is described in his memoirs The Wanderer Between Two Worlds: <blockquote>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. The roar of the oncoming night storm swelled up on me. Strange voices filled the quivering air. 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. ... The cordon of our Silesian regiment stretched from Bois des Chevaliers to the Bois de Vérines, and the army of migratory wild geese ranged ghostlike above us all. Without seeing my intertwined lines in the darkness, I wrote on a scrap of paper a few verses: ..."</blockquote>
The Wanderer Between Two Worlds achieved great popularity in Germany. After participating in the Lake Naroch offensive, Flex returned to Berlin to write a series of reports on the offensive, which was published posthumously in 1919 as (The Russian Spring Offensive of 1916). He died on 17 October 1917 from wounds sustained during Operation Albion.
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