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Correspondence from Grady McMurtry to Karl Germer
[EXTRACT]
[22 July 1945]
. . . sometimes I get in a certain mood [when writing poetry] and grind out several different items all cast in the same mold—the same verse form, and the use of a certain word such as 'spawned'.
You know, I think I told you, that when we went into Metz last winter they still hadn't picked up all of the Jerry stiffs. Hadn't recovered all of ours, for that matter. All right out where I set up my dump, the Jerry Infantry had had a skirmish line. There were stiffs all over the place, of course, and that is where I got my inspiration for "Bitterness". A burial detail came along after a few weeks and picked them all up except one poor bastard who was so iced into a foxhole that they would have had to use dynamite. Perhaps he was so covered with snow by then that they didn't find him. Anyway, came the rain and we did:
His head held in a wall of mud, His nostrils breathing stench. With starting lids his eyes of blood, Were dripping in the trench.
That is the general idea.
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