All quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 3149 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of All quiet on the Western Front
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: All quiet on the Western Front

Author: Erich Maria Remarque

Translator: A. W. Wheen

Release date: January 1, 2025 [eBook #75011]
Most recently updated: July 2, 2025

Language: English

Original publication: London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1929

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75011

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALL QUIET ON
THE WESTERN FRONT ***

ERICH MARIA REMARQUE

ALL QUIET
ON THE WESTERN
FRONT

Translated from the German by
A. W. WHEEN

LONDON

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

IM WESTEN NICHTS NEUES first published
in Germany January 1929
First published in England March 1929
Reprinted April 1929
Reprinted April 1929
Reprinted April 1929
Reprinted April 1929
Reprinted April 1929
Reprinted April 1929
Reprinted April 1929
Reprinted April 1929

Reprinted May 1929
Reprinted May 1929
Reprinted May 1929
Reprinted June 1929
Reprinted June 1929
Completing 90,000

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
CHISWICK PRESS; CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an
adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with
it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they
may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

CHAPTER I

We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved,
and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans. We are satisfied and
at peace. Each man has another mess-tin full for the evening; and, what is
more, there is a double ration of sausage and bread. That puts a man in fine
trim. We have not had such luck as this for a long time. The cook with his

carroty head is begging us to eat; he beckons with his ladle to every one that
passes, and spoons him out a great dollop. He does not see how he can
empty his stew-pot in time for coffee. Tjaden and Müller have produced
two wash-basins and had them filled up to the brim as a reserve. In Tjaden
this is voracity, in Müller it is foresight. Where Tjaden puts it all is a
mystery, for he is and always will be as thin as a rake.

What's more important still is the issue of a double ration of smokes.
Ten cigars, twenty cigarettes, and two quids of chew per man; now that is
decent. I have exchanged my chewing tobacco with Katczinsky for his
cigarettes, which means I have forty altogether. That's enough for a day.

It is true we have no right to this windfall. The Prussian is not so
generous. We have only a miscalculation to thank for it.

Fourteen days ago we had to go up and relieve the front line. It was
fairly quiet on our sector, so the quartermaster who remained in the rear had
requisitioned the usual quantity of rations and provided for the full
company of one hundred and fifty men. But on the last day an astonishing
number of English field-guns opened up on us with high-explosive,
drumming ceaselessly on our position, so that we suffered heavily and came
back only eighty strong.

Last night we moved back and settled down to get a good sleep for
once: Katczinsky is right when he says it would not be such a bad war if
only one could get a little more sleep. In the line we have had next to none,
and fourteen days is a long time at one stretch.

It was noon before the first of us crawled out of our quarters. Half an
hour later every man had his mess-tin and we gathered at the cook-house,
which smelt greasy and nourishing. At the head of the queue of course were
the hungriest—little Albert Kropp, the clearest thinker among us and
therefore the first to be lance-corporal; Müller, who still carries his school
textbooks with him, dreams of examinations, and during a bombardment
mutters propositions in physics; Leer, who wears a full beard and has a
preference for the girls from officers' brothels. He swears that they are
obliged by an army order to wear silk chemises and to bathe before
entertaining guests of the rank of major and upwards. And as the fourth,

myself, Paul Bäumer. All four are nineteen years of age, and all four joined
up from the same class as volunteers for the war.

Close behind us were our friends: Tjaden, a skinny lock-smith of our
own age, the biggest eater of the company. He sits down to eat as thin as a
grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the family way; Haie Westhus, of
the same age, a peat-digger, who can easily hold a ration-loaf in his hand
and say: Guess what I've got in my fist; then Detering, a peasant, who
thinks of nothing but his farm-yard and his wife; and finally Stanislaus
Katczinsky, the leader of our group, shrewd, cunning, and hard-bitten, forty
years of age, with a face of the soil, blue eyes, bent shoulders, and a
remarkable nose for dirty weather, good food, and soft jobs.

Our gang formed the head of the queue before the cook-house. We were
growing impatient, for the cook paid no attention to us.

Finally Katczinsky called out to him: "Say, Heinrich, open up the soup-
kitchen. Anyone can see the beans are done."

He shook his head sleepily: "You must all be there first." Tjaden
grinned: "We are all here."

The sergeant-cook still took no notice. "That may do for you," he said.
"But where are the others?"

"They won't be fed by you to-day. They're either in the dressing-station
or pushing up daisies."

The cook was quite disconcerted as the facts dawned on him. He was
staggered. "And I have cooked for one hundred and fifty men——"

Kropp poked him in the ribs. "Then for once we'll have enough. Come
on, begin!"

Suddenly a vision came over Tjaden. His sharp, mousey features began
to shine, his eyes grew small with cunning, his jaws twitched, and he
whispered hoarsely: "Man! then you've got bread for one hundred and fifty
men too, eh?"

The sergeant-cook nodded absent-minded, and bewildered.

Tjaden seized him by the tunic. "And sausage?"

Ginger nodded again.

Tjaden's chaps quivered. "Tobacco too?"

"Yes, everything."

Tjaden beamed: "What a bean-feast! That's all for us! Each man gets—
wait a bit—yes, practically two issues."

Then Ginger stirred himself and said: "That won't do."

Then we got excited and began to crowd around.

"Why won't that do, you old carrot?" demanded Katczinsky.

"Eighty men can't have what is meant for a hundred and fifty."

"We'll soon show you," growled Müller.

"I don't care about the stew, but I can only issue rations for eighty men,"
persisted Ginger.

Katczinsky got angry. "You might be generous for once. You haven't
drawn food for eighty men. You've drawn it for the Second Company.
Good. Let's have it then. We are the Second Company."

We began to jostle the fellow. No one felt kindly toward him, for it was
his fault that the food twice came up to us in the line too late and cold.
Under shell-fire he wouldn't bring his kitchen up near enough, so that our
soup-carriers had to go much farther than those of the other companies.
Now Bulcke of the First Company is a much better fellow. He is as fat as a
hamster in winter, but he trundles his pots when it comes to that right up to
the very front line.

We were in just the right mood, and there would certainly have been a
dust-up if our company commander had not appeared. He informed himself
of the dispute, and only remarked: "Yes, we did have heavy losses
yesterday."

He looked in the dixie. "The beans look good."

Ginger nodded. "Cooked with meat and fat."

The lieutenant looked at us. He knew what we were thinking. And he
knew many other things too, because he came to the company as a non-
com. and was promoted from the ranks. He lifted the lid from the dixie
again and sniffed. Then passing on he said: "Serve out the whole issue. We
can do with it. And bring me a plate full too."

Ginger looked sheepish as Tjaden danced round him.

"It doesn't cost you anything! One would think the quartermaster's store
belonged to him! And now get on with it, you old blubber-sticker, and don't
you miscount either."

"You be hanged!" spat out Ginger. When things get beyond him he
throws up the sponge altogether; he just goes to pieces. And as if to show
that all things were now the same to him, of his own free will he shared out
half a pound of synthetic honey equally among us.

To-day is wonderfully good. The mail has come, and almost every man
has a couple of letters and papers. We stroll over to the meadow behind the
billets. Kropp has the round lid of a margarine tub under his arm.

On the right side of the meadow a large common latrine has been built,
a well-planned and durable construction. But that is for recruits who as yet
have not learned how to make the most of whatever comes their way. We
look for something better. Scattered about everywhere there are separate,
individual boxes for the same purpose. They are square, neat boxes with
wooden sides all round, and have unimpeachably satisfactory seats. On the
sides are hand-grips enabling one to shift them about. We move three

together in a ring and sit down comfortably. For two hours we have been
here without getting up.

I well remember how embarrassed we were as recruits in barracks when
we had to use the general latrine. There were no doors and twenty men sat
side by side as in a railway carriage, so that they could be reviewed all at
one glance, for soldiers must always be under supervision.

Since then we have learned better than to be shy about such trifling
immodesties. In time things far worse than that came easy to us.

Here in the open air though, the business is entirely a pleasure. I no
longer understand why we should always have shied at it before. It is, in
fact, just as natural as eating and drinking. We did not properly appreciate
these boxes when we first enlisted; they were new to us and did not fill such
an important rôle—but now they have long been a matter of course.

The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and
intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions,
and they give an intimate flavour to expressions of his greatest joy as well
as of his deepest indignation. It is impossible to express oneself in any other
way so clearly and pithily. Our families and our teachers will be shocked
when we go home, but here it is the universal language.

Enforced publicity has in our eyes restored the character of complete
innocence to all these things. More than that, they are so much a matter of
course that their comfortable performance is fully as much enjoyed as the
playing of a safe top running flush. Not for nothing was the word "latrine-
rumour" invented; these places are the regimental gossip-shops and
common-rooms.

We feel ourselves for the time being better off than in any palatial
white-tiled "convenience." There it can only be hygienic; here it is
beautiful.

These are wonderfully care-free hours. Over us is the blue sky. On the
horizon float the bright yellow, sunlit observation-balloons, and the many
little white clouds of the anti-aircraft shells. Often they rise in a sheaf as

they follow after an airman. We hear the muffled rumble of the front only as
very distant thunder, bumble-bees droning by quite drown it. Around us
stretches the flowery meadow. The grasses sway their tall spears; the white
butterflies flutter around and float on the soft warm wind of the late
summer. We read letters and newspapers and smoke. We take off our caps
and lay them down beside us. The wind plays with our hair; it plays with
our words and thoughts. The three boxes stand in the midst of the glowing,
red field-poppies.

We set the lid of the margarine tub on our knees and so have a good
table for a game of skat. Kropp has the cards with him. After every throw-in
the loser pays into the pool. One could sit like this for ever.

The notes of an accordion float across from the billets. Often we lay
aside the cards and look about us. One of us will say: "Well, boys...." Or "It
was a near thing that time...." And for a moment we fall silent. There is in
each of us a feeling of constraint. We are all sensible of it; it needs no words
to communicate it. It might easily have happened that we should not be
sitting here on our boxes to-day; it came damn near to that. And so
everything is new and brave, red poppies and good food, cigarettes and
summer breeze.

Kropp asks: "Anyone seen Kemmerich lately?"

"He's up at St. Joseph's," I tell him.

Müller explains that he has a flesh wound in his thigh; a good blighty.

We decide to go and see him this afternoon.

Kropp pulls out a letter. "Kantorek sends you all his best wishes."

We laugh. Müller throws his cigarette away and says: "I wish he was
here."

* *

Kantorek had been our schoolmaster, an active little man in a grey tail-
coat, with a face like a shrew-mouse. He was about the same size as
Corporal Himmelstoss, the "Terror of Klosterberg." It is very queer that the
unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men. They are so
much more energetic and uncompromising than the big fellows. I have
always taken good care to keep out of sections with small company
commanders. They are mostly confounded little martinets.

During drill-time Kantorek gave us long lectures until the whole of our
class went under his shepherding to the District Commandant and
volunteered. I can see him now, as he used to glare at us through his
spectacles and say in a moving voice: "Won't you join up, Comrades."

These teachers always carry their feelings ready in their waistcoat
pockets, and fetch them out at any hour of the day. But we didn't think of
that then.

There was, indeed, one of us who hesitated and did not want to fall into
line. That was Josef Behm, a plump, homely fellow. But he did allow
himself to be persuaded, otherwise he would have been ostracized. And
perhaps more of us thought as he did, but no one could very well stand out,
because at that time even one's parents were ready with the word "coward";
no one had the vaguest idea what we were in for. The wisest were just the
poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas
people who were better off were beside themselves with joy, though they
should have been much better able to judge what the consequences would
be.

Katczinsky said that was a result of their upbringing. It made them
stupid. And what Kat said, he had thought about.

Strange to say, Behm was one of the first to fall. He got hit in the eye
during an attack, and we left him lying for dead. We couldn't bring him with
us, because we had to come back helter-skelter. In the afternoon suddenly
we heard him call, and saw him outside creeping towards us. He had only
been knocked unconscious. Because he could not see, and was mad with
pain, he failed to keep under cover, and so was shot down before anyone
could go and fetch him in.

Naturally we couldn't blame Kantorek for this. Where would the world
be if one brought every man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks,
all of whom were convinced that there was only one way of doing well, and
that way theirs.

And that is just why they let us down so badly.

For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to
the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress—
to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in
our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented,
was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a manlier wisdom.
But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our
generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in
phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake,
and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.

While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying.
While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already
knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers,
no deserters, no cowards—they were very free with all these expressions.
We loved our country as much as they, we went courageously into every
action; but also we distinguished the false from the true, we had suddenly
learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We
were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

* *

Before going over to see Kemmerich we pack up his things: he will
need them on the way back.

In the dressing station there is great activity; it reeks as ever of carbolic,
ether, and sweat. Most of us are accustomed to this in the billets, but here it
makes one feel faint. We ask for Kemmerich. He lies in a large room and
receives us with feeble expressions of joy and helpless agitation. While he
was unconscious someone had stolen his watch.

Müller shakes his head: "I always told you that nobody should carry as
good a watch as that."

Müller is rather crude and tactless, otherwise he would hold his tongue,
for anybody can see that Kemmerich will never come out of this place
again. Whether he finds his watch or not will make no difference. At the
most one will only be able to send it to his people.

"How goes it, Franz?" asks Kropp.

Kemmerich's head sinks.

"Not so bad ... but I have such a damned pain in my foot."

We look at his bed covering. His leg lies under a wire basket. The bed
covering arches over it. I kick Müller on the shin, for he is just about to tell
Kemmerich what the orderlies told us outside: that Kemmerich has lost his
foot. The leg is amputated. He looks ghastly, yellow, and wan. In his face
there are already the strained lines that we know so well, we have seen them
now hundreds of times. They are not so much lines as marks. Under the
skin the life no longer pulses, it has already pressed out to the boundaries of
the body. Death is working through from within. It already has command in
the eyes. Here lies our comrade, Kemmerich, who a little while ago was
roasting horse-flesh with us and squatting in the shell-holes. He it is still
and yet it is not he any longer. His features have become uncertain and
faint, like a photographic plate on which two pictures have been taken.
Even his voice sounds like ashes.

I think of the time when we went away. His mother, a good plump
matron, brought him to the station. She wept continually, her face was
bloated and swollen. Kemmerich felt embarrassed, for she was the least
composed of all; she simply dissolved into fat and water. Then she caught
sight of me and took hold of my arm again and again, and implored me to
look after Franz out there. Indeed he did have a face like a child, and such
frail bones that after four weeks pack-carrying he already had flat feet. But
how can a man look after anyone in the field!

"Now you will soon be going home," says Kropp. "You would have had
to wait at least three or four months for your leave."

Kemmerich nods. I cannot bear to look at his hands, they are like wax.
Under the nails is the dirt of the trenches, it shows through blue-black like
poison. It strikes me that these nails will continue to grow like long
fantastic cellar-plants long after Kemmerich breathes no more. I see the
picture before me. They twist themselves into corkscrews and grow and
grow, and with them the hair on the decayed skull, just like grass in a good
soil, just like grass, how can it be possible——

Müller leans over. "We have brought your things, Franz."

Kemmerich signs with his hand. "Put them under the bed."

Müller does so. Kemmerich starts on again about the watch. How can
one calm him without making him suspicious?

Müller reappears with a pair of airman's boots. They are fine English
boots of soft, yellow leather which reach to the knee and lace all the way—
they are things to be coveted.

Müller is delighted at the sight of them. He matches their soles against
his own clumsy boots and says: "Will you be taking them with you then,
Franz?"

We all three have the same thought; even if he should get better, he
would be able to use only one—they are no use to him. But as things are
now it is a pity that they should stay here; the orderlies will of course grab
them as soon as he is dead.

"Won't you leave them with us?" Müller repeats.

Kemmerich doesn't want to. They are his most prized possessions.

"Well, we could exchange," suggests Müller again. "Out here one can
make some use of them." Still Kemmerich is not to be moved.

I tread on Müller's foot; reluctantly he puts the fine boots back again
under the bed.

We talk a little more and then take our leave.

"Cheerio, Franz."

I promise him to come back in the morning. Müller talks of doing so
too. He is thinking of the lace-up boots and means to be on the spot.

Kemmerich groans. He is feverish. We get hold of an orderly outside
and ask him to give Kemmerich a dose of morphia.

He refuses. "If we were to give morphia to everyone we would have to
have tubs full——"

"You only attend to officers properly," says Kropp viciously.

I hastily intervene and give him a cigarette. He takes it.

"Are you usually allowed to give it, then?" I ask him.

He is annoyed. "If you don't think so, then why do you ask?"

I press a couple more cigarettes into his hand. "Do us the favour——"

"Well, all right," he says.

Kropp goes in with him. He doesn't trust him and wants to see. We wait
outside.

Müller returns to the subject of the boots. "They would fit me perfectly.
In these boots I get blister after blister. Do you think he will last till to-
morrow after drill? If he passes out in the night, we know where the boots
——"

Kropp returns. "Do you think——?" he asks.

"Done for," says Müller emphatically.

We go back to the huts. I think of the letter that I must write to-morrow
to Kemmerich's mother. I am freezing. I could do with a tot of rum. Müller
pulls up some grass and chews it. Suddenly little Kropp throws his cigarette
away, stamps on it savagely, and looking round him with a broken and
distracted face, stammers: "Damned shit, the damned shit!"

We walk on for a long time. Kropp has calmed himself; we understand:
he sees red, out here every man gets like that sometime.

"What has Kantorek written to you?" Müller asks him.

He laughs. "We are the Iron Youth."

We all three smile bitterly. Kropp rails: he is glad that he can speak.

Yes, that's the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron
Youth. Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young?
Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk.

CHAPTER II

It is strange to think that at home in the drawer of my writing table there
lies the beginning of a play called "Saul" and a bundle of poems. Many an
evening I have worked over them—we all did something of the kind—but
that has become so unreal to me that I cannot comprehend it any more. Our
early life is cut off from the moment we came here, and that without our
lifting a hand. We often try to look back on it and to find an explanation, but
never quite succeed. For us young men of twenty everything is
extraordinarily vague, for Kropp, Müller, Leer, and me, for all of us whom
Kantorek calls the "Iron Youth." All the older men are linked up with their
previous life. They have wives, children, occupations, and interests, they
have a background which is so strong that the war cannot obliterate it. We
young men of twenty, however, have only our parents, and some, perhaps, a
girl—that is not much, for at our age the influence of parents is at its

weakest and girls have not yet got a hold over us. Besides this there was
little else—some enthusiasm, a few hobbies, and our school. Beyond this
our life did not extend. And of this nothing remains.

Kantorek would say that we stood on the threshold of life. And so it
would seem. We had as yet taken no root. The war swept us away. For the
others, the older men, it is but an interruption. They are able to think
beyond it. We, however, have been gripped by it and do not know what the
end may be. We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we
have become a waste land. All the same, we are not often sad.

* *

Though Müller would be delighted to have Kemmerich's boots, he is
really quite as sympathetic as another who could not bear to think of such a
thing for grief. He merely sees things clearly. Were Kemmerich able to
make any use of the boots, then Müller would rather go barefoot over
barbed wire than scheme how to get hold of them. But as it is the boots are
quite inappropriate to Kemmerich's circumstances, whereas Müller can
make good use of them. Kemmerich will die; it is immaterial who gets
them. Why, then, should Müller not succeed to them? he has more right
than a hospital orderly. When Kemmerich is dead it will be too late.
Therefore Müller is already on the watch.

We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are
artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us. And good boots are
scarce.

* *

Once it was different. When we went to the district-commandant to
enlist, we were a class of twenty young men, many of whom proudly
shaved for the first time before going to the barracks. We had no definite
plans for our future. Our thoughts of a career and occupation were as yet of
too unpractical a character to furnish any scheme of life. We were still
crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also, an ideal
and almost romantic character. We were trained in the army for ten weeks
and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We

learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer.
At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent, we recognized
that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the
system, not freedom but drill. We became soldiers with eagerness and
enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After
three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman
should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our
teachers, and the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe. With our
young, awakened eyes we saw that the classical conception of the
Fatherland held by our teachers resolved itself here into a renunciation of
personality such as one would not ask of the meanest servant—salutes,
springing to attention, parade-marches, presenting arms, right wheel, left
wheel, clicking the heels, insults, and a thousand pettifogging details. We
had fancied our task would be different, only to find we were to be trained
for heroism as though we were circus-ponies. But we soon accustomed
ourselves to it. We learned in fact that some part of these things was
necessary, but the rest merely show. Soldiers have a fine nose for such
distinctions.

* *

By threes and fours our class was scattered over the platoons amongst
Frisian fishermen, peasants, and labourers with whom we soon made
friends. Kropp, Müller, Kemmerich, and I went to No. 9 platoon under
Corporal Himmelstoss.

He had the reputation of being the strictest disciplinarian in the camp,
and was proud of it. He was a small undersized fellow with a foxy, waxed
moustache, who had seen twelve years service and was in civil life a
postman. He had a special dislike for Kropp, Tjaden, Westhus, and me,
because he sensed a quiet defiance.

I have remade his bed fourteen times in one morning. Each time he had
some fault to find and pulled it to pieces. I have kneaded a pair of
prehistoric boots that were as hard as iron for twenty hours—with intervals
of course—until they became as soft as butter and not even Himmelstoss
could find anything more to do to them; under his orders I have scrubbed
out the Corporals' Mess with a tooth-brush. Kropp and I were given the job

of clearing the barrack-square of snow with a hand-broom and a dust-pan,
and we would have gone on till we were frozen had not a lieutenant
accidentally appeared who sent us off, and hauled Himmelstoss over the
coals. But the only result of this was to make Himmelstoss hate us more.
For six weeks consecutively I did guard every Sunday and was hut-orderly
for the same length of time. With full pack and rifle I have had to practise
on a soft, wet, newly ploughed field the "Prepare to advance, advance!" and
the "Lie down!" until I was one lump of mud and finally collapsed. Four
hours later I had to report to Himmelstoss with my clothes scrubbed clean,
my hands chafed and bleeding. Together with Kropp, Westhus, and Tjaden I
have stood at attention in a hard frost without gloves for a quarter of an
hour at a stretch, while Himmelstoss watched for the slightest movement of
our bare fingers on the steel barrel of the rifle. I have run eight times from
the top floor of the barracks down to the courtyard in my shirt at two
o'clock in the morning because my drawers projected three inches beyond
the edge of the stool on which one had to stack all one's things. Alongside
me ran the corporal, Himmelstoss, and trod on my bare toes. At bayonet-
practice I had constantly to fight with Himmelstoss, I with a heavy iron
weapon whilst he had a handy wooden one with which he easily struck my
arms till they were black and blue. Once, indeed, I became so infuriated that
I ran at him blindly and gave him a mighty jab in the stomach and knocked
him down. When he reported me the company commander laughed at him
and told him he ought to keep his eyes open; he understood Himmelstoss,
and apparently was not displeased at his discomfiture. I became a past
master on the parallel bars and strove to surpass my instructor at physical
jerks;—we have trembled at the mere sound of his voice, but this runaway
post-horse never got the better of us.

One Sunday as Kropp and I were lugging a latrine-bucket on a pole
across the barrack-yard, Himmelstoss came by, all polished up and spry for
going out. He planted himself in front of us and asked how we liked the job.
In spite of ourselves we tripped and emptied the bucket over his legs. He
raved, but the limit had been reached.

"That means clink," he yelled.

But Kropp had had enough. "There'll be an inquiry first," he said, "and
then we'll unload."

"Mind how you speak to a non-commissioned officer!" bawled
Himmelstoss. "Have you lost your senses? You wait till you're spoken to.
What will you do, anyway?"

"Show you up, Corporal," said Kropp, his thumbs in line with the seams
of his trousers.

Himmelstoss saw what we meant and went off without saying a word.
But before he disappeared he growled: "You'll drink this!"—but it was the
end of his authority. He tried it on once more in the ploughed field with his
"Prepare to advance, advance" and "Lie down." We obeyed each order,
since an order's an order and has to be obeyed. But we did it so slowly that
Himmelstoss became desperate. Carefully we went down on our knees, then
on our hands, and so on; in the meantime, quite infuriated, he had given
another command. But before we had even begun to sweat he was hoarse.
After that he left us in peace. He did indeed always refer to us as swine, but
there was, nevertheless, a certain respect in his tone.

There were many other staff corporals, the majority of whom were more
decent. But above all each of them wanted to keep his good job there at
home as long as possible, and that he could do only by being strict with the
recruits.

Practically every conceivable polishing job in the entire camp fell to us
and we often howled with rage. Many of us became ill through it; Wolf
actually died of inflammation of the lung. But we would have felt ridiculous
had we hauled down our colours. We became hard, suspicious, pitiless,
vicious, tough—and that was good; for these attributes had been entirely
lacking in us. Had we gone into the trenches without this period of training
most of us would certainly have gone mad. Only thus were we prepared for
what awaited us. We did not break down, but endured; our twenty years,
which made many another thing so grievous, helped us in this. But by far
the most important was that it awakened in us a strong, practical sense of
esprit de corps, which in the field developed into the finest thing that arose
out of the war—comradeship.

* *

I sit by Kemmerich's bed. He is sinking steadily. Around us is a great
commotion. A hospital train has arrived and the wounded fit to be moved
are being selected. The doctor passes by Kemmerich's bed without once
looking at him.

"Next time, Franz," I say.

He raises himself on the pillow with his elbows. "They have amputated
my leg."

He knows it too then. I nod and answer: "You must be thankful you've
come off with that."

He is silent.

I resume: "It might have been both legs, Franz. Wegeler has lost his
right arm. That's much worse. Besides, you will be going home." He looks
at me. "Do you think so?"

"Of course."

"Do you think so?" he repeats.

"Sure, Franz. Once you've got over the operation."

He beckons me to bend down. I stoop over him and he whispers: "I
don't think so."

"Don't talk rubbish, Franz, in a couple of days you'll see for yourself.
What is it anyway—an amputated leg? here they patch up far worse things
than that."

He lifts one hand. "Look here though, these fingers."

"That's the result of the operation. Just eat decently and you'll soon be
well again. Do they look after you properly?"

He points to a dish that is still half full. I get excited. "Franz, you must
eat. Eating is the main thing. That looks good too."

He turns away. After a pause he says slowly: "I wanted to become a
head-forester once."

"So you may still," I assure him. "There are splendid artificial limbs
now, you'd hardly know there was anything missing. They are fixed on to
the muscles. You can move the fingers and work and even write with an
artificial hand. And besides, they will always be making new
improvements."

For a while he lies still. Then he says: "You can take my lace-up boots
with you for Müller."

I nod and wonder what to say to encourage him. His lips have fallen
away, his mouth has become larger, his teeth stick out and look as though
they were made of chalk. The flesh melts, the forehead bulges more
prominently, the cheek-bones protrude. The skeleton is working itself
through. The eyes are already sunken in. In a couple of hours it will be over.

He is not the first that I have seen thus; but we grew up together and
that always makes it a bit different. I have copied his essays. At school he
used to wear a brown coat with a belt and shiny sleeves. He was the only
one of us, too, who could do the giant's turn on the horizontal bar. His hair
flew in his face like silk when he did it. Kantorek was proud of him for it.
But he couldn't endure cigarettes. His skin was very white; he had
something of the girl about him.

I glance at my boots. They are big and clumsy, the breeches are tucked
into them, and standing up one looks well-built and powerful in these great
drain-pipes. But when we go bathing and strip, suddenly we have slender
legs again and slight shoulders. We are no longer soldiers but little more
than boys; no one would believe that we could carry packs. It is a strange
moment when we stand naked; then we become civilians, and almost feel
ourselves to be so. When bathing Franz Kemmerich looked as slight and
frail as a child. There he lies now—but why? The whole world ought to

pass by this bed and say: "That is Franz Kemmerich, nineteen and a half
years old, he doesn't want to die. Let him not die!"

My thoughts become confused. This atmosphere of carbolic and
gangrene clogs the lungs, it is a thick gruel, it suffocates.

It grows dark. Kemmerich's face changes colour, it lifts from the pillow
and is so pale that it gleams. The mouth moves slightly. I draw near to him.
He whispers: "If you find my watch, send it home——"

I do not reply. It is no use any more. No one can console him. I am
wretched with helplessness. This forehead with its hollow temples, this
mouth that is now merely a slit, this sharp nose! And the fat, weeping
woman at home to whom I must write. If only the letter were sent off
already!

Hospital-orderlies go to and fro with bottles and pails. One of them
comes up, casts a glance at Kemmerich and goes away again. You can see
he is waiting, apparently he wants the bed.

I bend over Franz and talk to him as though that could save him:
"Perhaps you will go to the convalescent home at Klosterberg, among the
villas, Franz. Then you can look out from the window across the fields to
the two trees on the horizon. It is the loveliest time of the year now, when
the corn ripens; at evening the fields in the sunlight look like mother-of-
pearl. And the lane of poplars by the Klosterbach, where we used to catch
sticklebacks! You can build an aquarium again and keep fish in it, and you
can go out without asking anyone, you can even play the piano if you want
to."

I lean down over his face which lies in the shadow. He still breathes,
lightly. His face is wet, he is crying. What a fine mess I have made of it
with my foolish talk!

"But Franz"—I put my arm round his shoulder and put my face against
his. "Will you sleep now?"

He does not answer. The tears run down his cheeks. I would like to wipe
them away but my handkerchief is too dirty.

An hour passes. I sit tensely and watch his every movement in case he
may perhaps say something. What if he were to open his mouth and cry out!
But he only weeps, his head turned aside. He does not speak of his mother
or his brothers and sisters. He says nothing; all that lies behind him; he is
entirely alone now with his little life of nineteen years, and cries because it
leaves him. This is the most disturbing and hardest parting that ever I have
seen, although it was pretty bad too with Tiedjen, who called for his mother
—a big bear of a fellow who, with wild eyes full of terror, held off the
doctor from his bed with a dagger until he collapsed.

Suddenly Kemmerich groans and begins to gurgle.

I jump up, stumble outside and demand:

"Where is the doctor? Where is the doctor?"

As I catch sight of the white apron I seize hold of it: "Come quick,
Franz Kemmerich is dying."

He frees himself and asks an orderly standing by: "Which will that be?"

He says: "Bed 26, amputated thigh."

He sniffs: "How should I know anything about it, I've amputated five
legs to-day"; he shoves me away, says to the hospital-orderly "You see to
it," and runs off to the operating room.

I tremble with rage as I go along with the orderly. The man looks at me
and says: "One operation after another since five o'clock this morning. You
know to-day alone there have been sixteen deaths—yours is the
seventeenth. There will probably be twenty altogether——"

I become faint, all at once I cannot do any more. I won't revile any
more, it is senseless, I could drop down and never rise up again.

We are by Kemmerich's bed. He is dead. The face is still wet from the
tears. The eyes are half open and yellow like old horn buttons.

The orderly pokes me in the ribs. "Are you taking his things with you?"
I nod.

He goes on: "We must take him away at once, we want the bed. Outside
they are lying on the floor."

I collect the things, untie Kemmerich's identification disc and take it
away. The orderly asks about the pay-book, I say that it is probably in the
orderly-room, and go. Behind me they are already hauling Franz on to a
water-proof sheet.

Outside the door I am aware of the darkness and the wind as a
deliverance. I breathe as deep as I can, and feel the breeze in my face, warm
and soft as never before. Thoughts of girls, of flowery meadows, of white
clouds suddenly come into my head. My feet begin to move forward in my
boots, I go quicker, I run. Soldiers pass by me, I hear their voices without
understanding. The earth is streaming with forces which pour into me
through the soles of my feet. The night crackles electrically, the front
thunders like a concert of drums. My limbs move supplely, I feel my joints
strong, I breathe the air deeply. The night lives, I live. I feel a hunger,
greater than comes from the belly alone.

Müller stands in front of the hut and waits for me. I give him the boots.
We go in and he tries them on. They fit well.

He roots among his supplies and offers me a fine piece of saveloy. With
it goes hot tea and rum.

CHAPTER III

Reinforcements have arrived. The vacancies have been filled and the
sacks of straw are already laid out in the huts. Some of them are old hands,
but there are twenty-five men of a later draft from the base. They are about
two years younger than us. Kropp nudges me: "Seen the infants?"

I nod. We stick out our chests, shave in the open, shove our hands in our
pockets, inspect the recruits and feel ourselves to be stone-age veterans.

Katczinsky joins us. We stroll past the horse-boxes and go over to the
reinforcements, who have already been issued with gas-masks and coffee.

"Long time since you've had anything decent to eat, eh?" Kat asks one
of the youngsters.

He grimaces. "For breakfast, turnip-bread—lunch, turnip-stew—supper,
turnip-cutlets and turnip-salad." Kat gives a knowing whistle.

"Bread made of turnips? You've been in luck, it's nothing new for it to
be made of sawdust. But what do you say to haricot beans? Have some?"

The youngster turns red: "You can't kid me."

Katczinsky merely says: "Fetch your mess-tin."

We follow curiously. He takes us to a tub beside his straw sack. It is
nearly half full of a stew of beef and beans. Katczinsky plants himself in
front of it like a general and says:

"Sharp eyes and light fingers! That's what the Prussians say."

We are surprised. "Great guts, Kat, how did you come by that?" I ask
him.

"Ginger was glad I took it. I gave him three pieces of parachute silk for
it. Cold beans taste fine, too."

Grudgingly he gives the youngster a portion and says:

"Next time you come with your mess-tin have a cigar or a chew of
tobacco in your other hand. Get me?" Then he turns to us. "You get off scot
free, of course."

* *

Katczinsky never goes short; he has a sixth sense. There are such people
everywhere but one does not appreciate it at first. Every company has one
or two. Katczinsky is the smartest I know. By trade he is a cobbler, I
believe, but that hasn't anything to do with it; he understands all trades. It's
a good thing to be friends with him, as Kropp and I are, and Haie Westhus
too, more or less. But Haie is rather the executive arm operating under Kat's
orders when things come to blows. For that he has his qualifications.

For example, we land at night in some entirely unknown spot, a sorry
hole, that has been eaten out to the very walls. We are quartered in a small
dark factory adapted to the purpose. There are beds in it, or rather bunks—a
couple of wooden beams over which wire netting is stretched.

Wire netting is hard. And there's nothing to put on it. Our waterproof
sheets are too thin. We use our blankets to cover ourselves.

Kat looks at the place and then says to Haie Westhus: "Come with me."
They go off to explore. Half an hour later they are back again with arms full
of straw. Kat has found a horse-box with straw in it. Now we might sleep if
we weren't so terribly hungry.

Kropp asks an artilleryman who has been some time in this
neighbourhood: "Is there a canteen anywhere abouts?"

"Is there a what?" he laughs. "There's nothing to be had here. You won't
find so much as a crust of bread here."

"Aren't there any inhabitants here at all then?"

He spits. "Yes, a couple. But they mostly loaf round the cook house and
beg."

"That's a bad business!—Then we'll have to pull in our belts and wait
till the rations come up in the morning."

But I see Kat has put on his cap.

"Where to, Kat?" I ask.

"Just to explore the place a bit." He strolls off. The artilleryman grins
scornfully. "Let him explore! But don't be too hopeful about it."

Disappointed we lie down and consider whether we couldn't have a go
at the iron rations. But it's too risky; so we try to get a wink of sleep.

Kropp divides a cigarette and hands me half. Tjaden gives an account of
his national dish—broad-beans and bacon. He despises it when not
flavoured with bog-myrtle, and, "for God's sake, let it all be cooked
together, not the potatoes, the beans, and the bacon separately." Someone
growls that he will pound Tjaden into bog-myrtle if he doesn't shut up. Then
all becomes quiet in the big room—only the candles flickering from the
necks of a couple of bottles and the artilleryman spitting every now and
then.

We stir a bit as the door opens and Kat appears. I think I must be
dreaming; he has two loaves of bread under his arm and a blood-stained
sandbag full of horse-flesh in his hand. The artilleryman's pipe drops from
his mouth. He feels the bread. "Real bread, by God! and still hot too!"

Kat gives no explanation. He has the bread, the rest doesn't matter. I'm
sure that if he were planted down in the middle of the desert, in half an hour
he would have gathered together a supper of roast meat, dates, and wine.

"Cut some wood," he says curtly to Haie.

Then he hauls out a frying-pan from under his coat, and a handful of salt
as well as a lump of fat from his pocket. He has thought of everything. Haie
makes a fire on the floor. It lights up the empty room of the factory. We
climb out of bed.

The artilleryman hesitates. He wonders whether to praise Kat and so
perhaps gain a little for himself. But Katczinsky doesn't even see him, he
might as well be thin air. He goes off cursing.

Kat knows the way to roast horse-flesh so that it's tender. It shouldn't be
put straight into the pan, that makes it tough. It should be boiled first in a
little water. With our knives we squat round in a circle and fill our bellies.

That is Kat. If for but one hour in a year something eatable were to be
had in some one place only, within that hour, as if moved by a vision, he
would put on his cap, go out and walk directly there, as though following a
compass, and find it.

He finds everything—if it is cold, a small stove and wood, hay and
straw, a table and chairs—but above all food. It is uncanny; one would think
he conjured it out of the air. His masterpiece was four boxes of lobsters.
Admittedly we would rather have had a good beef steak.

* *

We have settled ourselves on the sunny side of the hut. There is a smell
of tar, of summer, and of sweaty feet. Kat sits beside me. He wants to talk.
To-day we have been practising saluting because Tjaden failed to salute a
major. Kat can't get it out of his head.

"You see, we are losing the war because we can salute too well," he
says.

Kropp stalks up, with his breeches rolled up and his feet bare. He lays
out his washed socks to dry on the grass. Kat turns his eyes to heaven, lets
off a mighty fart, and says apologetically: "Every little bean must be heard
as well as seen."

The two begin to argue. At the same time they lay a bottle of beer on the
result of an air-fight that's going on above us. Katczinsky won't budge from
the opinion, which as an old Front-hog, he rhymes:

Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay
And the war would be over and done in a day.

Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of
war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands,
like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two
countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out
among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be
much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people
do the fighting.

The subject is dropped. Then the conversation turns to drill.

A picture comes before me. Burning midday in the barrack-yard. The
heat hangs over the square. The barracks are deserted. Everything sleeps.
All one hears is the drummers practising; they have installed themselves
anywhere and practise brokenly, dully, monotonously. What a concord!
Midday heat, barrack-square, and drummers beating!

The windows of the barracks are empty and dark. From some of them
trousers are hanging to dry. The rooms are cool and one looks toward them
longingly.

O dark, musty platoon huts, with the iron bedsteads, the chequered
bedding, the lockers and the stools! Even you can become the object of
desire; out here you have a faint resemblance to home; your rooms, full of
the smell of stale food, sleep, smoke, and clothes!

Katczinsky paints it all in lively colours. What would we not give to be
able to go back to it! But we must not pursue that line of thought any
further.

Those early morning hours of instruction—"What are the parts of the 98
rifle?"—the midday hours of physical training—"Pianist, forward! By the
right, quick march. Report to the cook-house for potato-peeling."

We indulge in reminiscences. Kropp laughs suddenly and says: "Change
at Löhne!"

That was our corporal's favourite game. Löhne is a railway junction. In
order that our fellows going on leave shouldn't get lost there, Himmelstoss
used to practise the change in the barrack-room. We had to learn that at
Löhne, to reach the branch-line, we must pass through a subway. The beds
represented the subway and each man stood at attention on the left side of
his bed. Then came the command: "Change at Löhne!" and like lightning
everyone scrambled under the bed to the opposite side. We practised this for
a whole hour——

Meanwhile the German aeroplane has been shot down. Like a comet it
bursts into a streamer of smoke and falls headlong. Kropp has lost the bottle
of beer. Disgruntled he counts out the money from his wallet.

"Surely Himmelstoss was a very different fellow as a postman," say I,
after Albert's disappointment has subsided. "Then how does it come that
he's such a bully as a drill-sergeant?"

The question revives Kropp, more particularly as he hears there's no
more beer in the canteen. "It's not only Himmelstoss, there are lots of them.
As sure as they get a stripe or a star they become different men, just as
though they'd swallowed concrete."

"That's the uniform," I suggest.

"Roughly speaking it is," says Kat, and prepares for a long speech; "but
the root of the matter lies elsewhere. For instance, if you train a dog to eat
potatoes and then afterwards put a piece of meat in front of him, he'll snap
at it, it's his nature. And if you give a man a little bit of authority he behaves
just the same way, he snaps at it too. The things are precisely the same. In
himself man is essentially a beast, only he butters it over like a slice of
bread with a little decorum. The army is based on that; one man must
always have power over the other. The mischief is merely that each one has
much too much power. A non-com. can torment a private, a lieutenant a
non-com., a captain a lieutenant, until he goes mad. And because they know
they can, they all soon acquire the habit more or less. Take a simple case:

we are marching back from the parade-ground dog-tired. Then comes the
order to sing. We are glad enough to be able to trail arms but we sing
spiritlessly. At once the company is turned about and has to do another
hour's drill as punishment. On the march back the order to sing is given
again, and once more we start. Now what's the use of all that? It's simply
that the company commander's head has been turned by having so much
power. And nobody blames him. On the contrary, he is praised for being
strict. That, of course, is only a trifling instance, but it holds also in very
different affairs. Now I ask you: Let a man be whatever you like in peace-
time, what occupation is there in which he can behave like that without
getting a crack on the nose? He can only do that in the army. It goes to the
heads of them all, you see. And the more insignificant a man has been in
civil life the worse it takes him."

"They say, of course, there must be discipline," ventures Kropp
meditatively.

"True," growls Kat, "they always do. And it may be so; still it oughtn't
to become an abuse. But you try to explain that to a blacksmith or a
labourer or a workman, you try to make that clear to a simple tommy—and
that's what most of them are here. All he understands is that he has been
properly trained so that when he comes up to the front he thinks he knows
exactly what he should do in every circumstance and what not. It's simply
amazing, I tell you, that the ordinary soldier survives so long up here in the
front-line. Simply amazing!"

No one protests. Everyone knows that drill ceases only in the front-line
and begins again a few miles behind, with all the absurdities of saluting and
parade. It is an iron law that the soldier must be employed under every
circumstance.

Here Tjaden comes up with a flushed face. He is so excited that he
stutters. Beaming with satisfaction he stammers out: "Himmelstoss is on his
way. He's coming to the front!"

* *

Tjaden has a special grudge against Himmelstoss, because of the way he
educated him in the barracks. Tjaden wets his bed, he does it at night in his
sleep. Himmelstoss maintained that it was sheer laziness and invented a
method worthy of himself for curing Tjaden.

He hunted up another piss-a-bed, named Kindervater, from a
neighbouring hut, and quartered him with Tjaden. In the huts there were the
usual bunks, one above the other in pairs, with mattresses of wire-netting.
Himmelstoss put these two so that one occupied the upper and the other the
lower bunk. The man underneath was of course disgusted. The next night
they were changed over and the lower one put on top so that he could
retaliate. That was Himmelstoss's system of self-education.

The idea was low but not ill-conceived. Unfortunately it accomplished
nothing because the first assumption was wrong: it was not laziness in
either of them. Anyone who looked at their sallow skin could see that. The
matter ended in one of them always sleeping on the floor, where he
frequently caught cold.

Meanwhile Haie sits down beside us. He winks at me and rubs his paws
thoughtfully. We once spent the finest day of our army-life together—the
day before we left for the front. We had been allotted to one of the recently
formed regiments, but were first to be sent back for equipment to the
garrison, not to the reinforcement-depot, of course, but to another barracks.
We were due to leave next morning early. In the evening we prepared
ourselves to square accounts with Himmelstoss.

We had sworn for weeks past to do this. Kropp had even gone so far as
to propose entering the postal service in peace-time in order to be
Himmelstoss's superior when he became a postman again. He revelled in
the thought of how he would grind him. It was this that made it impossible
for him to crush us altogether—we always reckoned that later, at the end of
the war, we would have our revenge on him.

In the meantime we decided to give him a good hiding. What could he
do to us anyhow if he didn't recognize us and we left early the next
morning?

We knew which pub he used to visit every evening. Returning to the
barracks he had to go along a dark, uninhabited road. There we waited for
him behind a pile of stones. I had a bed-cover with me. We trembled with
suspense, hoping he would be alone. At last we heard his footstep, which
we recognized easily, so often had we heard it in the mornings as the door
flew open and he bawled: "Get up!"

"Alone?" whispered Kropp.

"Alone."

I slipped round the pile of stones with Tjaden.

Himmelstoss seemed a little elevated; he was singing. His belt-buckle
gleamed. He came on unsuspectingly.

We seized the bed-cover, made a quick leap, threw it over his head from
behind and pulled it round him so that he stood there in a white sack unable
to raise his arms. The singing stopped. The next moment Haie Westhus was
there, and spreading out his arms he shoved us back in order to be first in.
He put himself in position with evident satisfaction, raised his arm like a
signal-mast and his hand like a coal-shovel and fetched such a blow on the
white sack as would have felled an ox.

Himmelstoss was thrown down, he rolled five yards and started to yell.
But we were prepared for that and had brought a cushion. Haie squatted
down, laid the cushion on his knees, felt where Himmelstoss's head was and
pressed it down on the pillow. Immediately his voice was muffled. Haie let
him get a gasp of air every so often, when he would give a mighty yell that
was immediately hushed.

Tjaden unbuttoned Himmelstoss's braces and pulled down his trousers,
holding the whip meantime in his teeth. Then he stood up and set to work.

It was a wonderful picture: Himmelstoss on the ground; Haie bending
over him with a fiendish grin and his mouth open with blood-lust,
Himmelstoss's head on his knees; then the convulsed, striped drawers, the
knock knees, executing at every blow most original movements in the

lowered breeches, and towering over them like a woodcutter the
indefatigable Tjaden. In the end we had to drag him away to get our turn.

Finally Haie stood Himmelstoss on his feet again and gave one last
personal remonstrance. As he stretched out his right arm preparatory to
giving him a box on the ear he looked as if he were going to reach down a
star.

Himmelstoss staggered. Haie stood him up again, made ready and
fetched him a second, well-aimed beauty with the left hand. Himmelstoss
yelled and fell down on all fours cursing. His striped postman's backside
gleamed in the moonlight.

We disappeared at full speed.

Haie looked round once again and said wrathfully, satisfied and rather
mysteriously:

"Revenge is black-pudding."

Himmelstoss ought to have been pleased; his saying that we should each
educate one another had borne fruit for himself. We had become successful
students of his method.

He never discovered whom he had to thank for the business. At any rate
he scored a bed-cover out of it; for when we returned a few hours later to
look for it, it was no longer to be found.

That evening's work made us more or less content to leave next
morning. And an old buffer was pleased to describe us as "young heroes."

CHAPTER IV

We have to go up on wiring fatigue. The motor lorries roll up after dark.
We climb in. It is a warm evening and the twilight seems like a canopy
under whose shelter we feel drawn together. Even the stingy Tjaden gives
me a cigarette and then a light.

We stand jammed in together, shoulder to shoulder, there is no room to
sit. But we do not expect that. Müller is in a good mood for once; he is
wearing his new boots.

The engines drone, the lorries bump and rattle. The roads are worn and
full of holes. We dare not show a light so we lurch along and are often
almost pitched out. That does not worry us, however. It can happen if it
likes; a broken arm is better than a hole in the guts, and many a man would
be thankful enough for such a chance of finding his way home again.

Beside us stream the munition-columns in long files. They are making
the pace, they overtake us going forward. We joke with them and they
answer back.

A wall becomes visible, it belongs to a house which lies on the side of
the road. I suddenly prick up my ears. Am I deceived? Again I hear
distinctly the cackle of geese. A glance at Katczinsky—a glance from him
to me; we understand one another.

"Kat, I hear some aspirants for the frying-pan over there."

He nods. "It will be attended to when we come back. I have their
number."

Of course Kat has their number. He knows all about every leg of goose
within a radius of fifteen miles.

The lorries arrive at the artillery lines. The gun-emplacements are
camouflaged with bushes against aerial observation, and look like a kind of
military Feast of the Tabernacles. These branches might seem gay and
cheerful were not cannon embowered there.

The air becomes acrid with the smoke of the guns and the fog. The
fumes of powder taste bitter on the tongue. The roar of the guns makes our
lorry stagger, the reverberation rolls raging away to the rear, everything
quakes. Our faces change imperceptibly. We are not, indeed, in the front-
line, but only in the reserves, yet in every face can be read: This is the
Front, now we are within its embrace.

It is not fear. Men who have been up as often as we have become thick
skinned. Only the young recruits are agitated. Kat explains to them: "That
was a twelve-inch. You hear the explosion first and afterwards comes the
sound of the gun."

But the hollow sound of the firing does not reach us. It is swallowed up
in the general murmur of the front. Kat listens: "There'll be a bombardment
to-night."

We all listen. The front is restless. "The Tommies are firing already,"
says Kropp.

The shelling can be heard distinctly. It is the English batteries to the
right of our section. They are beginning an hour too soon. According to us
they start punctually at ten o'clock.

"What's got them?" says Müller, "their clocks must be fast."

"There'll be a bombardment, I tell you, I can feel it in my bones." Kat
shrugs his shoulders.

Three shells land beside us. The burst of flame shoots across the fog, the
fragments howl and drone. We shiver and are glad to think that we shall be
back in the huts early in the morning.

Our faces are neither paler nor more flushed than usual; they are not
more tense nor more flabby—and yet they are changed. We feel that in our
blood a contact has shot home. That is no figure of speech; it is fact. It is the
front, the consciousness of the front, that makes this contact. The moment
that the first shells whistle over and the air is rent with the explosions there
is suddenly in our veins, in our hands, in our eyes a tense waiting, a

watching, a heightened alertness, a strange sharpening of the senses. The
body with one bound is in full readiness.

It often seems to me as though it were the vibrating, shuddering air that
with a noiseless leap springs upon us; or as though the front itself emitted
an electric current which awakened unknown nerve-centres.

Every time it is the same. We start out for the front plain soldiers, either
cheerful or gloomy: then come the first gun-emplacements and every word
of our speech has a new ring.

When Kat stands in front of the hut and says: "There'll be a
bombardment," that is merely his own opinion; but if he says it here, then
the sentence has the sharpness of a bayonet in the moonlight, it cuts clean
through the thought, it thrusts nearer and speaks to this unknown thing that
is awakened in us, a dark meaning—"There'll be a bombardment." Perhaps
it is our inner and most secret life that shivers and falls on guard.

* *

To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far
away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly,
irresistibly, inescapably into itself.

From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us—mostly
from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier.
When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he
buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire,
then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and
his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and gives him a
new lease of ten seconds of life, receives him again and often for ever.

Earth!—Earth!—Earth!

Earth with thy folds, and hollows and holes, into which a man may fling
himself and crouch down! In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of
annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, thou
grantest us the great resisting surge of new-won life. Our being, almost

utterly carried away by the fury of the storm, streams back through our
hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones, bury ourselves in thee, and
through the long minutes in a mute agony of hope bite into thee with our
lips!

At the sound of the first droning of the shells we rush back, in one part
of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that is awakened in us
we are led and protected. It is not conscious; it is far quicker, much more
sure, less fallible, than consciousness. One cannot explain it. A man is
walking along without thought or heed;—suddenly he throws himself down
on the ground and a storm of fragments flies harmlessly over him;—yet he
cannot remember either to have heard the shell coming or to have thought
of flinging himself down. But had he not abandoned himself to the impulse
he would now be a heap of mangled flesh. It is this other, this second sight
in us, that has thrown us to the ground and saved us, without our knowing
how. If it were not so, there would not be one man alive from Flanders to
the Vosges.

We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers—we reach the zone
where the front begins and become on the instant human animals.

* *

An indigent looking wood receives us. We pass by the soup-kitchens.
Under cover of the wood we climb out. The lorries turn back. They are to
collect us again in the morning, before dawn.

Mist and the smoke of guns lie breast-high over the fields. The moon is
shining. Along the road troops file. Their helmets gleam softly in the
moonlight. The heads and the rifles stand out above the white mist, nodding
heads, rocking carriers of guns.

Farther on the mist ends. Here the heads become figures; coats, trousers,
and boots appear out of the mist as from a milky pool. They become a
column. The column marches on, straight ahead, the figures resolve
themselves into a block, individuals are no longer recognizable, the dark
wedge presses onward, fantastically topped by the heads and weapons
floating off on the milky pool. A column—not men at all.

Guns and munition wagons are moving along a cross-road. The backs of
the horses shine in the moonlight, their movements are beautiful, they toss
their heads, and their eyes gleam. The guns and the wagons float before the
dim background of the moonlit landscape, the riders in their steel helmets
resemble knights of a forgotten time; it is strangely beautiful and arresting.

We push on to the pioneer dump. Some of us load our shoulders with
pointed and twisted iron stakes; others thrust smooth iron rods through rolls
of wire and go off with them. The burdens are awkward and heavy.

The ground becomes more broken. From ahead come warnings: "Look
out, deep shell-hole on the left"—"Mind, trenches"——

Our eyes peer out, our feet and our sticks feel in front of us before they
take the weight of the body. Suddenly the line halts; I bump my face against
the roll of wire carried by the man in front and curse.

There are some shell-smashed lorries in the road. Another order:
"Cigarettes and pipes out," We are getting near the line.

In the meantime it has become pitch dark. We skirt a small wood and
then have the front line immediately before us.

An uncertain, red glow spreads along the sky line from one end to the
other. It is in perpetual movement, punctuated with the bursts of flame from
the muzzles of the batteries. Balls of light rise up high above it, silver and
red spheres which explode and rain down in showers of red, white, and
green stars. French rockets go up, which unfold a silk parachute to the air
and drift slowly down. They light up everything as bright as day, their light
shines on us and we see our shadows sharply outlined on the ground. They
hover for the space of a minute before they burn out. Immediately fresh
ones shoot up to the sky, and again green, red, and blue stars.

"Bombardment," says Kat.

The thunder of the guns swells to a single heavy roar and then breaks up
again into separate explosions. The dry bursts of the machine-guns rattle.
Above us the air teems with invisible swift movement, with howls, pipings,

and hisses. They are the smaller shells;—and amongst them, booming
through the night like an organ, go the great coal-boxes and the heavies.
They have a hoarse, distant bellow like a rutting stag and make their way
high above the howl and whistle of the smaller shells. It reminds me of
flocks of wild geese when I hear them. Last autumn the wild geese flew day
after day across the path of the shells.

The searchlights begin to sweep the dark sky. They slide along it like
gigantic tapering rulers. One of them pauses, and quivers a little.
Immediately a second is beside him, a black insect is caught between them
and tries to escape—the airman. He hesitates, is blinded and falls.

* *

At regular intervals we ram in the iron stakes. Two men hold a roll and
the others spool off the barbed wire. It is that awful stuff with close-set,
long spikes. I am not used to unrolling it and tear my hand.

After a few hours it is done. But there is still some time before the
lorries come. Most of us lie down and sleep. I try also, but it has turned too
chilly. Near to the sea one is constantly waked by the cold.

Once I fall fast asleep. Then waking suddenly with a start I do not know
where I am. I see the stars, I see the rockets, and for a moment have the
impression that I have fallen asleep at a garden fête. I don't know whether it
is morning or evening, I lie in the pale cradle of the twilight, and listen for
soft words which will come, soft and near—am I crying? I put my hand to
my eyes, it is so fantastic, am I a child? Smooth skin:—it lasts only a
second, then I recognize the silhouette of Katczinsky. The old veteran, he
sits quietly and smokes his pipe—a covered pipe of course. When he sees I
am awake, he says: "That gave you a fright. It was only a nose-cap, it
landed in the bushes over there."

I sit up, I feel myself strangely alone. It's good Kat is there. He gazes
thoughtfully at the front and says:

"Mighty fine fire-works if they weren't so dangerous."

One lands behind us. Two recruits jump up terrified. A couple of
minutes later another comes over, nearer this time. Kat knocks out his pipe.
"It makes a glow."

Then it begins in earnest. We crawl away as well as we can in our haste.
The next lands fair among us. Two fellows cry out. Green rockets shoot up
on the sky-line. Barrage. The mud flies high, fragments whizz past. The
crack of the guns is heard long after the roar of the explosions.

Beside us lies a fair-headed recruit in utter terror. He has buried his face
in his hands, his helmet has fallen off. I fish hold of it and try to put it back
on his head. He looks up, pushes the helmet off and like a child creeps
under my arm, his head close to my breast. The little shoulders heave.
Shoulders just like Kemmerich's. I let him be. So that the helmet should be
of some use I stick it on his behind;—not for a jest, but out of consideration,
since that is his highest part. And though there is plenty of meat there, a
shot in it can be damned painful. Besides, a man has to lie a whole month
on his belly in the hospital, and afterwards he would be almost sure to have
a limp.

It's got someone pretty badly. Cries are heard between the explosions.

At last it grows quiet. The fire has lifted over us and is now dropping on
the reserves. We risk a look. Red rockets shoot up to the sky. Apparently
there's an attack coming.

Where we are it is still quiet. I sit up and shake the recruit by the
shoulder. "All over, kid! It's all right this time."

He looks round him dazedly. "You'll get used to it soon," I tell him.

He sees his helmet and puts it on. Gradually he comes to. Then
suddenly he turns fiery red and looks confused. Cautiously he reaches his
hand to his behind and looks at me dismally.

I understand at once: Gun-shy. That wasn't the reason I had stuck his
helmet over it. "That's no disgrace," I reassure him: "Many's the man before

you has had his pants full after the first bombardment. Go behind that bush
there and throw your underpants away. Get along——"

* *

He goes off. Things become quieter, but the cries do not cease. "What's
up, Albert?" I ask.

"A couple of columns over there have got it in the neck."

The cries continue. It is not men, they could not cry so terribly.

"Wounded horses," says Kat.

It's unendurable. It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred
creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning.

We are pale. Detering stands up. "God! For God's sake! Shoot them!"

He is a farmer and very fond of horses. It gets under his skin. Then as if
deliberately the fire dies down again. The screaming of the beasts becomes
louder. One can no longer distinguish whence in this now quiet, silvery
landscape it comes; ghostly, invisible, it is everywhere, between heaven and
earth it rolls on immeasurably. Detering raves and yells out: "Shoot them!
Shoot them, can't you? damn you again!"

"They must look after the men first," says Kat quietly.

We stand up and try to see where it is. If we could only see the animals
we should be able to endure it better. Müller has a pair of glasses. We see a
dark group, bearers with stretchers, and larger black clumps moving about.
Those are the wounded horses. But not all of them. Some gallop away in
the distance, fall down, and then run on farther. The belly of one is ripped
open, the guts trail out. He becomes tangled in them and falls, then he
stands up again.

Detering raises his gun and aims. Kat hits it up in the air. "Are you mad
——?"

Detering trembles and throws his rifle on the ground.

We sit down and hold our ears. But this appalling noise, these groans
and screams penetrate, they penetrate everywhere.

We can bear almost anything. But now the sweat breaks out on us. We
must get up and run, no matter where, but where these cries can no longer
be heard. And it is not men, only horses.

From the dark group stretchers move off again. Then single shots crack
out. The black heap is convulsed and becomes thinner. At last! But still it is
not the end. The men cannot overtake the wounded beasts which fly in their
pain, their wide open mouths full of anguish. One of the men goes down on
his knee, a shot—one horse drops—another. The last one props himself on
his forelegs and drags himself round in a circle like a merry-go-round;
squatting, it drags round in circles on its stiffened forelegs, apparently its
back is broken. The soldier runs up and shoots it. Slowly, humbly it sinks to
the ground.

We take our hands from our ears. The cries are silenced. Only a long-
drawn, dying sigh still hangs on the air.

Then again only the rockets, the singing of the shells, and the stars—
and they shine out wonderfully.

Detering walks up and down cursing: "Like to know what harm they've
done." He returns to it once again. His voice is agitated, it sounds almost
dignified as he says: "I tell you it is the vilest baseness to use horses in the
war."

* *

We go back. It is time we returned to the lorries. The sky is become a bit
brighter. Three o'clock in the morning. The breeze is fresh and cool, the pale
hour makes our faces look grey.

We trudge onward in single file through the trenches and shell-holes and
come again to the zone of mist. Katczinsky is restive, that's a bad sign.

"What's up, Kat?" says Kropp.

"I wish I were back home." Home—he means the huts.

"It won't last much longer, Kat."

He is nervous. "I don't know, I don't know——"

We come to the communication-trench and then to the open fields. The
little wood reappears; we know every foot of ground here. There's the
cemetery with the mounds and the black crosses.

That moment it breaks out behind us, swells, roars, and thunders. We
duck down—a cloud of flame shoots up a hundred yards ahead of us.

The next minute under a second explosion part of the wood rises slowly
in the air, three or four trees sail up and then crash to pieces. The shells
begin to hiss like safety-valves—heavy fire——

"Take cover!" yells somebody—"Cover!"

The fields are flat, the wood is too distant and dangerous—the only
cover is the graveyard and the mounds. We stumble across in the dark and
as though spirited away every man lies glued behind a mound.

Not a moment too soon. The dark goes mad. It heaves and raves.
Darknesses blacker than the night rush on us with giant strides, over us and
away. The flames of the explosions light up the graveyard.

There is no escape anywhere. By the light of the shells I try to get a
view of the fields. They are a surging sea, daggers of flame from the
explosions leap up like fountains. It is impossible for anyone to break
through it.

The wood vanishes, it is pounded, crushed, torn to pieces. We must stay
here in the grave-yard.

The earth bursts before us. It rains clods. I feel a smack. My sleeve is
torn away by a splinter. I shut my fist. No pain. Still that does not reassure

me: wounds don't hurt till afterwards. I feel the arm all over. It is grazed but
sound. Now a crack on the skull, I begin to lose consciousness. Like
lightning the thought comes to me: Don't faint, sink down in the black broth
and immediately come up to the top again. A splinter slashes into my
helmet, but has travelled so far that it does not go through. I wipe the mud
out of my eyes. A hole is torn up in front of me. Shells hardly ever land in
the same hole twice, I'll get into it. With one bound I fling myself down and
lie on the earth as flat as a fish; there it whistles again, quickly I crouch
together, claw for cover, feel something on the left, shove in beside it, it
gives way, I groan, the earth leaps, the blast thunders in my ears, I creep
under the yielding thing, cover myself with it, draw it over me, it is wood,
cloth, cover, cover, miserable cover against the whizzing splinters.

I open my eyes—my fingers grasp a sleeve, an arm. A wounded man? I
yell to him—no answer—a dead man. My hand gropes farther, splinters of
wood—now I remember again that we are lying in the graveyard.

But the shelling is stronger than everything. It wipes out the
sensibilities, I merely crawl still deeper into the coffin, it should protect me,
and especially as Death himself lies in it too.

Before me gapes the shell-hole. I grasp it with my eyes as with fists.
With one leap I must be in it. There, I get a smack in the face, a hand
clamps on to my shoulder—has the dead man waked up?—The hand shakes
me, I turn my head, in the second of light I stare into the face of Katczinsky,
he has his mouth wide open and is yelling. I hear nothing, he rattles me,
comes nearer, in a momentary lull his voice reaches me: "Gas—Gaas—
Gaaas—Pass it on."

I grab for my gas-mask. Some distance from me there lies someone. I
think of nothing but this: That fellow there must know: Gaaas—Gaaas——

I call, I lean toward him, I swipe at him with the satchel, he doesn't see
—once again, again—he merely ducks—it's a recruit—I look at Kat
desperately, he has his mask ready—I pull out mine too, my helmet falls to
one side, it slips over my face, I reach the man, his satchel is on the side
nearest me, I seize the mask, pull it over his head, he understands, I let go
and with a jump drop back into the shell-hole.

The dull thud of the gas-shells mingles with the crashes of the high
explosives. A bell sounds between the explosions, gongs, and metal
clappers warning everyone—Gas—Gas—Gaas.

Someone plumps down behind me, another. I wipe the goggles of my
mask clear of the moist breath. It is Kat, Kropp, and someone else. All four
of us lie there in heavy, watchful suspense and breathe as lightly as
possible.

These first minutes with the mask decide between life and death: is it
tightly woven? I remember the awful sights in the hospital: the gas patients
who in day-long suffocation cough their burnt lungs up in clots.

Cautiously, the mouth applied to the valve, I breathe. The gas still
creeps over the ground and sinks into all hollows. Like a big, soft jellyfish it
floats into our shell-hole and lolls there obscenely. I nudge Kat, it is better
to crawl out and lie on top than to stay here where the gas collects most. But
we don't get as far as that; a second bombardment begins. It is no longer as
though the shells roared; it is the earth itself raging.

With a crash something black bears down on us. It lands close beside
us; a coffin thrown up.

I see Kat move and I crawl across. The coffin has hit the fourth man in
our hole on his outstretched arm. He tries to tear off his gas-mask with the
other hand. Kropp seizes him just in time, twists the hand sharply behind
his back and holds it fast.

Kat and I proceed to free the wounded arm. The coffin lid is loose and
bursts open, we are easily able to pull it off, we toss the corpse out, it slides
down to the bottom of the shell-hole, then we try to loosen the under-part.

Fortunately the man swoons and Kropp is able to help us. We no longer
have to be careful, but work away till the coffin gives with a sigh before the
spade that we have dug in under it.

It has grown lighter. Kat takes a piece of the lid, places it under the
shattered arm, and we wrap all our bandages round it. For the moment we

can do no more.

Inside the gas-mask my head booms and roars—it is nigh bursting. My
lungs are tight, they breathe always the same hot, used-up air, the veins on
my temples are swollen, I feel I am suffocating.

A grey light filters through to us. I climb out over the edge of the shell-
hole. In the dirty twilight lies a leg torn clean off; the boot is quite whole, I
take that all in at a glance. Now someone stands up a few yards distant. I
polish the windows, in my excitement they are immediately dimmed again,
I peer through them, the man there no longer wears his mask.

I wait some seconds—he has not collapsed—he looks around and
makes a few paces—rattling in my throat I tear my mask off too and fall
down, the air streams into me like cold water, my eyes are bursting, the
wave sweeps over me and extinguishes me.

* *

The shelling has ceased. I drag myself to the crater and tell the others.
They take off their masks. We lift up the wounded man, one taking his
splintered arm. And so we stumble off hastily.

The graveyard is a mass of wreckage. Coffins and corpses lie strewn
about. They have been killed once again; but each of them that was flung up
saved one of us.

The hedge is destroyed, the rails of the light railway are torn up and rise
stiffly in the air in great arches. Someone lies in front of us. We stop; Kropp
goes on alone with the wounded man.

The man on the ground is a recruit. His hip is covered with blood; he is
so exhausted that I feel for my water-bottle where I have rum and tea. Kat
restrains my hand and stoops over him.

"Where's it got you, comrade?"

His eyes move. He is too weak to answer.

We cut off his trousers carefully. He groans. "Gently, gently, it is much
better——"

If he has been hit in the stomach he oughtn't to drink anything. There's
no vomiting, that's a good sign. We lay the hip bare. It is one mass of
mincemeat and bone splinters. The joint has been hit. This lad won't walk
any more.

I wet his temples with a moistened finger and give him a swig. His eyes
move again. We see now that the right arm is bleeding as well.

Kat spreads out two wads of dressing as wide as possible so that they
will cover the wound. I look for something to bind loosely round it. We
have nothing more, so I slit up the wounded man's trouser leg still farther in
order to use a piece of his underpants as a bandage. But he is wearing none.
I now look at him closely. He is the fair-headed boy of a little while ago.

In the meantime Kat has taken a bandage from a dead man's pocket and
we carefully bind the wound. I say to the youngster who looks at us fixedly:
"We're going for a stretcher now——"

Then he opens his mouth and whispers: "Stay here——"

"We'll be back again soon," says Kat. "We are only going to get a
stretcher for you."

We don't know if he understands. He whimpers like a child and plucks
at us: "Don't go away——"

Kat looks around and whispers: "Shouldn't we just take a revolver and
put an end to it?"

The youngster will hardly survive the carrying, and at the most he will
only last a few days. What he has gone through so far is nothing to what
he's in for till he dies. Now he is numb and feels nothing. In an hour he will
become one screaming bundle of intolerable pain. Every day that he can
live will be a howling torture. And to whom does it matter whether he has
them or not——

I nod. "Yes, Kat, we ought to put him out of his misery."

He stands still a moment. He has made up his mind. We look round—
but we are no longer alone. A little group is gathering, from the shell-holes
and trenches appear heads.

We get a stretcher.

Kat shakes his head. "Such a kid——" He repeats it: "Young innocents
——"

* *

Our losses are less than was to be expected—five killed and eight
wounded. It was in fact quite a short bombardment. Two of our dead lie in
the upturned graves. We had merely to throw the earth in on them.

We go back. We trot off silently in single file one behind the other. The
wounded are taken to the dressing-station. The morning is cloudy. The
bearers make a fuss about numbers and tickets, the wounded whimper. It
begins to rain.

An hour later we reach our lorries and climb in. There is more room
now than there was.

The rain becomes heavier. We take out waterproof sheets and spread
them over our heads. The rain rattles down, and flows off at the sides in
streams. The lorries bump through the holes, and we rock to and fro in a
half-sleep. Two men in the front of the lorry have long forked poles. They
watch for telephone wires which hang crosswise over the road so densely
that they might easily pull our heads off. The two fellows take them at the
right moment on their poles and lift them over behind us. We hear their call
"Mind—wire—," dip the knee in a half-sleep and straighten up again.

Monotonously the lorries sway, monotonously come the calls,
monotonously falls the rain. It falls on our heads and on the heads of the
dead up in the line, on the body of the little recruit with the wound that is so
much too big for his hip; it falls on Kemmerich's grave; it falls in our hearts.

An explosion sounds somewhere. We wince, our eyes become tense, our
hands are ready to vault over the side of the lorry into the ditch by the road.

It goes no farther—only the monotonous cry: "Mind—wire,"—our
knees bend—we are again half asleep.

CHAPTER V

Killing each separate louse is a tedious business when a man has
hundreds. The little beasts are hard and the everlasting cracking with one's
fingernails very soon becomes wearisome. So Tjaden has rigged up the lid
of a boot-polish tin with a piece of wire over the lighted stump of a candle.
The lice are simply thrown into this little pan. Crack! and they're done for.

We sit around with our shirts on our knees, our bodies naked to the
warm air and our hands at work. Haie has a particularly fine brand of louse:
they have a red cross on their heads. He suggests that he brought them back
with him from the hospital at Thourhout, where they attended personally on
a surgeon-general. He says he means to use the fat that slowly accumulates
in the tin-lid for polishing his boots, and roars with laughter for half an hour
at his own joke.

But he hasn't much success to-day; we are too preoccupied with another
affair.

The rumour has materialized. Himmelstoss has come. He appeared
yesterday; we've already heard the well-known voice. He seems to have
overdone it with a couple of young recruits on the ploughed field at home,
and unknown to him the son of the local magistrate was watching. That
cooked his goose.

He will meet some surprises here. Tjaden has been meditating for hours
what to say to him. Haie gazes thoughtfully at his great paws and winks at
me. The thrashing was the high water mark of his life. He tells me he often

dreams of it. Kropp and Müller are amusing themselves. From somewhere
or other, probably the pioneer-cook-house, Kropp has bagged for himself a
mess-tin full of beans. Müller squints hungrily into it but checks himself
and says: "Albert, what would you do if it were suddenly peace-time
again?"

"There won't be any civil life," says Albert bluntly.

"Well, but if—" persists Müller, "what would you do?"

"Clear out of this!" growls Kropp.

"Of course. And then what?"

"Get drunk," says Albert.

"Don't talk rot, I mean seriously——"

"So do I," says Kropp, "what else should a man do?"

Kat becomes interested. He levies tribute on Kropp's tin of beans,
swallows some, then considers for a while and says: "You might get drunk
first, of course, but then you'd take the next train for home and mother.
Peace-time, man, Albert——"

He fumbles in his oil-cloth pocket-book for a photograph and suddenly
shows it all round. "My old people!" Then he puts it back and swears:
"Damned lousy war——"

"It's all very well for you to talk," I tell him. "You've a wife and
children."

"True," he nods, "and I have to see to it that they've something to eat."

We laugh. "They won't lack for that, Kat, you'd scrounge it from
somewhere."

Müller is insatiable and gives himself no peace. He wakes Haie Westhus
out of his dream. "Haie, what would you do if it was peace time?"

"Give you a kick in the backside for the way you talk," I say. "How does
it come about exactly?"

"How does the cow-shit come on the roof?" retorts Müller laconically,
and turns to Haie Westhus again.

It is too much for Haie. He shakes his freckled head:

"You mean when the war's over?"

"Exactly. You've said it."

"Well, there'd be women of course, eh?"—Haie licks his lips.

"Sure."

"By Jove yes," says Haie, his face melting, "then I'd grab some good
buxom dame, some real kitchen wench with plenty to get hold of, you
know, and jump straight into bed. Just you think, boys, a real feather-bed
with a spring mattress; I wouldn't put trousers on again for a week."

Everyone is silent. The picture is too good. Our flesh creeps. At last
Müller pulls himself together and says:

"And then what?"

A pause. Then Haie explains rather awkwardly: "If I were a non-com.
I'd stay with the Prussians and serve out my time."

"Haie, you've got a screw loose, surely!" I say.

"Have you ever dug peat?" he retorts good-naturedly. "You try it."

Then he pulls a spoon out of the top of his boot and reaches over into
Kropp's mess-tin.

"It can't be worse than digging trenches," I venture.

Haie chews and grins: "It lasts longer though. And there's no getting out
of it either."

"But, man, surely it's better at home."

"Some ways," says he, and with open mouth sinks into a day-dream.

You can see what he is thinking. There is the mean little hut on the
moors, the hard work on the heath from morning till night in the heat, the
miserable pay, the dirty labourer's clothes.

"In the army in peace time you've nothing to trouble about," he goes on,
"your food's found every day, or else you kick up a row; you've a bed, every
week clean under-wear like a perfect gent, you do your non-com.'s duty,
you have a good suit of clothes; in the evening you're a free man and go off
to the pub."

Haie is extraordinarily set on his idea. He's in love with it.

"And when your twelve years are up you get your pension and become
a village bobby, and you can walk about the whole day."

He's already sweating on it. "And just you think how you'd be treated.
Here a dram, there a pint. Everybody wants to be well in with a bobby."

"You'll never be a non-com. though, Haie," interrupts Kat.

Haie looks at him sadly and is silent. His thoughts still linger over the
clear evenings in autumn, the Sundays in the heather, the village bells, the
afternoons and evenings with the servant girls, the fried bacon and barley,
the care-free evening hours in the ale-house——

He can't part with all these dreams so abruptly; he merely growls:
"What silly questions you do ask."

He pulls his shirt over his head and buttons up his tunic.

"What would you do, Tjaden?" asks Kropp.

Tjaden thinks only of one thing. "See to it that Himmelstoss doesn't get
past me."

Apparently he would like most to have him in a cage and sail into him
with a club every morning. To Kropp he says warmly: "If I were in your
place I'd see to it that I became a lieutenant. Then you could grind him till
the water in his backside boils."

"And you, Detering?" asks Müller like an inquisitor. He's a born
schoolmaster with all his questions.

Detering is sparing with his words. But on this subject he speaks. He
looks at the sky and says only the one sentence: "I would go straight on
with the harvesting."

Then he gets up and walks off.

He is worried. His wife has to look after the farm. They've already taken
away two of his horses. Every day he reads the papers that come, to see
whether it is raining in his little corner of Oldenburg. They haven't brought
the hay in yet.

At this moment Himmelstoss appears. He comes straight up to our
group. Tjaden's face turns red. He stretches his length on the grass and shuts
his eyes in embarrassment.

Himmelstoss is a little hesitant, his gait becomes slower. Then he
marches up to us. No one makes any motion to stand up. Kropp looks up at
him with interest.

He continues to stand in front of us and wait. As no one says anything
he launches a "Well?"

A couple of seconds go by. Apparently Himmelstoss doesn't quite know
what to do. He would like most to set us all on the run again. But he seems
to have learned already that the front line isn't a parade ground. He tries it
on though, and by addressing himself to one instead of to all of us hopes to
get some response. Kropp is nearest, so he favours him.

"Well, you here too?"

But Albert's no friend of his. "A bit longer than you, I fancy," he retorts.

The red moustache twitches: "You don't recognize me any more, what?"

Tjaden now opens his eyes. "I do though."

Himmelstoss turns to him: "Tjaden, isn't it?"

Tjaden lifts his head. "And do you know what you are?"

Himmelstoss is disconcerted. "Since when have we become so familiar?
I don't remember that we ever slept in the gutter together?"

He has no idea what to make of the situation. He didn't expect this open
hostility. But he is on his guard: someone has already dinned some rot into
him about getting a shot in the back.

The question about the gutter makes Tjaden so mad that he becomes
almost witty: "No, you slept there by yourself."

Himmelstoss begins to boil. But Tjaden gets in ahead of him. He must
bring off his insult: "Wouldn't you like to know what you are? A dirty
hound, that's what you are. I've been wanting to tell you that for a long
time."

The satisfaction of months shines in his dull pig's eyes as he spits out:
Dirty hound!

Himmelstoss lets fly too, now. "What's that, you muck-rake, you dirty
peat-stealer? Stand up there, bring your heels together when your superior
officer speaks to you."

Tjaden winks solemnly. "You take a run and jump at yourself,
Himmelstoss."

Himmelstoss is a raging book of army regulations. The Kaiser couldn't
be more insulted. "Tjaden, I command you, as your superior officer: Stand

up!"

"Anything else you would like?" asks Tjaden.

"Will you obey my order or not?"

Tjaden replies, without knowing it, in the well-known classical phrase.

At the same time he ventilates his backside.

"I'll have you court-martialled," storms Himmelstoss.

We watch him disappear in the direction of the Orderly Room. Haie and
Tjaden burst into a regular peat-digger's bellow. Haie laughs so much that
he dislocates his jaw, and suddenly stands there helpless with his mouth
wide open. Albert has to put it back again by giving it a blow with his fist.

Kat is troubled: "If he reports you, it'll be pretty serious."

"Do you think he will?" asks Tjaden.

"Sure to," I say.

"The least you'll get will be five days close arrest," says Kat.

That doesn't worry Tjaden. "Five days clink are five days rest."

"And if they send you to the Fortress?" urges the thoroughgoing Müller.

"Well, for the time being the war will be over so far as I am concerned."

Tjaden is a cheerful soul. There aren't any worries for him. He goes off
with Haie and Leer so that they won't find him in the first flush of the
excitement.

* *

Müller hasn't finished yet. He tackles Kropp again.

"Albert, if you were really at home now, what would you do?"

Kropp is contented now and more accommodating:

"How many of us were there in the class exactly?"

We count up: out of twenty, seven are dead, four wounded, one in a
mad-house. That makes twelve privates.

"Three of them are lieutenants," says Müller. "Do you think they would
still let Kantorek sit on them?"

We guess not: we wouldn't let ourselves be sat on for that matter.

"What do you mean by the three-fold theme in 'William Tell'?" says
Kropp reminiscently, and roars with laughter.

"What was the purpose of the Poetic League of Göttingen?" asks Müller
suddenly and earnestly.

"How many children had Charles the Bald?" I interrupt gently.

"You'll never make anything of your life, Bäumer," croaks Müller.

"When was the Battle of Zana?" Kropp wants to know.

"You lack the studious mind, Kropp, sit down, three minus——" I wink.

"What offices did Lycurgus consider the most important for the state?"
asks Müller, pretending to take off his pince-nez.

"Does it go: 'We Germans fear God and none else in the whole world,'
or 'We, the Germans, fear God and——'" I submit.

"How many inhabitants has Melbourne?" asks Müller.

"How do you expect to succeed in life if you don't know that?" I ask
Albert hotly.

Which he caps with: "What is meant by Cohesion?"

We remember mighty little of all that rubbish. Anyway, it has never
been the slightest use to us. At school nobody ever taught us how to light a
cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood—
nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get
jammed, as it does in the ribs.

Müller says thoughtfully: "What's the use. We'll have to go back and sit
on the forms again."

I consider that out of the question. "We might take a special exam."

"That needs preparation. And if you do get through, what then? A
student's life isn't any better. If you have no money, you have to work like
the devil."

"It's a bit better. But it's rot all the same, everything they teach you."

Kropp supports me: "How can a man take all that stuff seriously when
he's once been out here?"

"Still you must have an occupation of some sort," insists Müller, as
though he were Kantorek himself.

Albert cleans his nails with a knife. We are surprised at this delicacy.
But it is merely pensiveness. He puts the knife away and continues: "That's
just it. Kat and Detering and Haie will go back to their jobs because they
had them already. Himmelstoss too. But we never had any. How will we
ever get used to one after this, here?"—he makes a gesture toward the front.

"We'll want a private income, and then we'll be able to live by ourselves
in a wood," I say, but at once feel ashamed of this absurd idea.

"But what will really happen when we go back?" wonders Müller, and
even he is troubled.

Kropp gives a shrug. "I don't know. Let's get back first, then we'll find
out."

We are all utterly at a loss. "What could we do?" I ask.

"I don't want to do anything," replies Kropp wearily. "You'll be dead one
day, so what does it matter? I don't think we'll ever go back."

"When I think about it, Albert," I say after a while, rolling over on my
back, "when I hear the word 'peace time,' it goes to my head; and if it really
came, I think I would do some unimaginable thing—something, you know,
that it's worth having lain here in the muck for. But I can't even imagine
anything. All I do know is that this business about professions and studies
and salaries and so on—it makes me sick, it is and always was disgusting. I
don't see anything—I don't see anything at all, Albert."

All at once everything seems to me confused and hopeless.

Kropp feels it too. "It will go pretty hard with us all. But nobody at
home seems to worry much about it. Two years of shells and bombs—a
man won't peel that off as easy as a sock."

We agree that it's the same for everyone; not only for us here, but
everywhere, for everyone who is of our age; to some more, and to others
less. It is the common fate of our generation.

Albert expresses it: "The war has ruined us for everything."

He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the
world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We
were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot
it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are
cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such
things no longer, we believe in the war.

* *

The Orderly Room shows signs of life. Himmelstoss seems to have
stirred them up. At the head of the column trots the fat sergeant-major. It is
queer that almost all pay-sergeant-majors are fat.

Himmelstoss follows him, thirsting for vengeance. His boots gleam in
the sun.

We get up.

"Where's Tjaden?" the sergeant puffs.

No one knows, of course. Himmelstoss glowers at us wrathfully. "You
know very well. You won't say, that's the fact of the matter. Out with it!"

Fatty looks round enquiringly; but Tjaden is not to be seen. He tries
another way.

"Tjaden will report at the Orderly Room in ten minutes."

Then he steams off with Himmelstoss in his wake.

"I have a feeling that next time we go up wiring I'll be letting a bundle
of wire fall on Himmelstoss's leg," hints Kropp.

"We'll have quite a lot of jokes with him," laughs Müller.—

That is our sole ambition: to knock the conceit out of a postman.—

I go into the hut and put Tjaden wise. He disappears.

Then we change our possy and lie down again to play cards. We know
how to do that: to play cards, to swear, and to fight. Not much for twenty
years;—and yet too much for twenty years.

Half an hour later Himmelstoss is back again. Nobody pays any
attention to him. He asks for Tjaden. We shrug our shoulders.

"Then you'd better find him," he persists. "Haven't you been to look for
him?"

Kropp lies back in the grass and says: "Have you ever been out here
before?"

"That's none of your business," retorts Himmelstoss. "I expect an
answer."

"Very good," says Kropp, getting up. "See up there where those little
white clouds are. Those are anti-aircraft. We were over there yesterday. Five
dead and eight wounded. It was a lot of fun. Next time, when you go up
with us, before they die the fellows will come up to you, click their heels,
and ask stiffly: 'Please may I go? Please may I hop it? We've been waiting
here a long time for someone like you.'"

He sits down again and Himmelstoss disappears like a comet.

"Three days C.B.," Kat conjectures.

"Next time I'll let fly," I say to Albert.

But that is the end. The case comes up for trial in the evening. In the
Orderly Room sits our Lieutenant, Bertink, and calls us in one after another.

I have to appear as a witness and explain the reason of Tjaden's
insubordination.

The story of the bed-wetting makes an impression. Himmelstoss is
recalled and I repeat my statement.

"Is that right?" Bertink asks Himmelstoss.

He tries to evade the question, but in the end has to confess, for Kropp
tells the same story.

"Why didn't someone report the matter, then?" asks Bertink.

We are silent: he must know himself how much use it is reporting such
things in the army. It isn't usual to make complaints in the army. He
understands it all right though, and lectures Himmelstoss, making it plain to
him that the front isn't a parade-ground. Then comes Tjaden's turn, who gets
a long sermon and three days open arrest. He gives Kropp a wink and one
day's open arrest. "It can't be helped," he says to him regretfully. He is a
decent fellow.

Open arrest is quite pleasant. The clink was once a fowl-house; there we
can visit the prisoners, we know how to manage it. Close arrest would have
meant the cellar.

They used to tie us to a tree, but that is forbidden now. In many ways
we are treated quite like men.

An hour after Tjaden and Kropp are settled in behind their wire-netting
we make our way in to them. Tjaden greets us crowing. Then we play skat
far into the night. Tjaden wins of course, the lucky wretch.

* *

When we break up Kat says to me: "What do you say to some roast
goose?"

"Not bad," I agree.

We climb up on a munition-waggon. The ride costs us two cigarettes.
Kat has marked the spot exactly. The shed belongs to a regimental
headquarters. I agree to get the goose and receive my instructions. The out-
house is behind the wall and the door shuts with just a peg.

Kat hoists me up. I rest my foot in his hands and climb over the wall.
Kat keeps watch below.

I wait a few moments to accustom my eyes to the darkness. Then I
recognize the shed. Softly I steal across, lift the peg, pull it out and open the
door.

I distinguish two white patches. Two geese, that's bad: if I grab one the
other will cackle. Well, both of them—if I'm quick, it can be done.

I make a jump. I catch hold of one and the next instant the second. Like
a madman I bash their heads against the wall to stun them. But I haven't
quite enough weight. The beasts cackle and strike out with their feet and
wings. I fight desperately, but Lord! what a kick a goose has! They struggle
and I stagger about. In the dark these white patches are terrifying. My arms

have grown wings and I'm almost afraid of going up into the sky, as though
I held a couple of captive balloons in my fists.

Then the row begins; one of them gets his breath and goes off like an
alarm clock. Before I can do anything, something comes in from outside; I
feel a blow, lie outstretched on the floor, and hear awful growls. A dog. I
steal a glance to the side, he makes a snap at my throat. I lie still and tuck
my chin into my collar.

It's a bull dog. After an eternity he withdraws his head and sits down
beside me. But if I make the least movement he growls. I consider. The only
thing to do is to get hold of my small revolver, and that too before anyone
arrives. Inch by inch I move my hand toward it.

I have the feeling that it lasts an hour. The slightest movement and then
an awful growl; I lie still, then try again. When at last I have the revolver
my hand starts to tremble. I press it against the ground and then say over to
myself: Jerk the revolver up, fire before he has a chance to grab, and then
jump up.

Slowly I take a deep breath and become calmer. Then I hold my breath,
whip up the revolver, it cracks, the dog leaps howling to one side, I make
for the door of the shed and fall head over heels over one of the damned
geese.

At full speed I seize it again, and with a swing toss it over the wall and
clamber up. No sooner am I on top than the dog is up again as lively as ever
and springs at me. Quickly I let myself drop. Ten paces away stands Kat
with the goose under his arm. As soon as he sees me we run.

At last we can take a breather. The goose is dead, Kat saw to that in a
moment. We intend to roast it, without telling anybody. I fetch a stove and
wood from the hut and we crawl into a small deserted lean-to which we use
for such purposes. The single window space is heavily curtained. There is a
sort of hearth, an iron plate set on some bricks. We kindle a fire.

Kat plucks and cleans the goose. We put the feathers carefully to one
side. We intend to make two cushions out of them with the inscription:

"Sleep soft under shell fire." The sound of the gun-fire from the front
penetrates into our refuge. The glow of the fire lights up our faces, shadows
dance on the wall. Sometimes a heavy crash and the hut shivers. Aeroplane
bombs. Once we hear a stifled cry. A hut must have been hit.

Aeroplanes drone; the tack-tack of machine guns breaks out. But no
light that could be observed shows from us.

We sit opposite one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby coats,
cooking a goose in the middle of the night. We don't talk much, but I
believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even
lovers have.

We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and the
circle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drips
from our hands, in our hearts we are close to one another, and the hour is
like the room: flecked over with the lights and shadows of our feelings cast
by a quiet fire. What does he know of me or I of him? formerly we should
not have had a single thought in common—now we sit with a goose
between us and feel in unison, and are so intimate that we do not even
speak.

It takes a long time to roast a goose, even when it is young and fat. So
we take turns. One bastes it while the other lies down and sleeps. A grand
smell gradually fills the hut.

The noises without increase in volume, pass into my dream and yet
linger in my memory. In a half sleep I watch Kat dip and raise the ladle. I
love him, his shoulders, his angular, stooping figure—and at the same time
I see behind him woods and stars, and a clear voice utters words that bring
me peace, to me, a soldier in big boots, belt, and knapsack, taking the road
that lies before him under the high heaven, quickly forgetting and seldom
sorrowful, for ever pressing on under the wide night sky.

A little soldier and a clear voice, and if anyone were to caress him he
would hardly understand, this soldier with the big boots and shut heart, who
marches because he is wearing big boots, and has forgotten all else but
marching. Beyond the sky-line is a country with flowers, lying so still that

he would like to weep. There are sights there that he has not forgotten,
because he never possessed them—perplexing, yet lost to him. Are not his
twenty summers there?

Is my face wet, and where am I? Kat stands before me, his gigantic,
stooping shadow falls upon me like home. He speaks gently, he smiles and
goes back to the fire.

Then he says: "It's done."

"Yes, Kat."

I stir myself. In the middle of the room shines the brown goose. We take
out our collapsible forks and our pocket-knives and each cuts off a leg. With
it we have army bread dipped in gravy. We eat slowly and with gusto.

"How does it taste, Kat?"

"Good! And yours?"

"Good, Kat."

We are brothers and press on one another the choicest pieces.
Afterwards I smoke a cigarette and Kat a cigar. There is still a lot left.

"How would it be, Kat, if we took a bit to Kropp and Tjaden?"

"Sure," says he.

We carve off a portion and wrap it up carefully in newspaper. The rest
we thought of taking over to the hut. Kat laughs, and simply says: "Tjaden."

I agree, we will have to take it all.

So we go off to the fowl-house to wake them. But first we pack away
the feathers.

Kropp and Tjaden take us for magicians. Then they get busy with their
teeth. Tjaden holds a wing in his mouth with both hands like a mouth-

organ, and gnaws. He drinks the gravy from the pot and smacks his lips:

"May I never forget you!"

We go to our hut. Again there is the lofty sky with the stars and the
oncoming dawn, and I pass on beneath it, a soldier with big boots and a full
belly, a little soldier in the early morning—but by my side, stooping and
angular, goes Kat, my comrade.

The outlines of the huts are upon us in the dawn like a dark, deep sleep.

CHAPTER VI

There are rumours of an offensive. We go up to the front two days
earlier than usual. On the way we pass a shelled school-house. Stacked up
against its longer side is a high double wall of yellow, unpolished, brand-
new coffins. They still smell of fir, and pine, and the forest. There are at
least a hundred.

"That's a good preparation for the offensive," says Müller astonished.

"They're for us," growls Detering.

"Don't talk rot," says Kat to him angrily.

"You be thankful if you get so much as a coffin," grins Tjaden, "they'll
slip you a water-proof sheet for your old Aunt Sally of a carcase."

The others jest too, unpleasant jests, but what else can a man do?—The
coffins are really for us. The organization surpasses itself in that kind of
thing.

Ahead of us everything is simmering. The first night we try to get our
bearings. When it is fairly quiet we can hear the transports behind the

enemy lines rolling ceaselessly until dawn. Kat says they do not go back but
are bringing up troops—troops, munitions, and shells.

The English artillery has been strengthened, that we can detect at once.
There are at least four more batteries of twenty-fives to the right of the
farm, and behind the poplars they have put in trench-mortars. Besides these
they have brought up a number of those little French beasts with
instantaneous fuses.

We are in low spirits. After we have been in the dug-outs two hours our
own shells begin to fall in the trench. This is the third time in four weeks. If
it were simply a mistake in aim no one would say anything, but the truth is
that the barrels are worn out. The shots are often so uncertain that they land
within our own lines. To-night two of our men were wounded by them.

* *

The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may
happen. We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of
uncertainty. Over us Chance hovers. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is
all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall.

It is this Chance that makes us indifferent. A few months ago I was
sitting in a dug-out playing skat; after a while I stood up and went to visit
some friends in another dug-out. On my return nothing more was to be seen
of the first one, it had been blown to pieces by a direct hit. I went back to
the second and arrived just in time to lend a hand digging it out. In the
interval it had been buried.

It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might
have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in
the open may survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier
outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts
his luck.

* *

We must look out for our bread. The rats have become much more
numerous lately because the trenches are no longer in good condition.
Detering says it is a sure sign of a coming bombardment.

The rats here are particularly repulsive, they are so fat—the kind we call
corpse-rats. They have shocking, evil, naked faces, and it is nauseating to
see their long, nude tails.

They seem to be mighty hungry. Almost every man has had his bread
gnawed. Kropp wrapped his in his waterproof sheet and put it under his
head, but he cannot sleep because they run over his face to get at it.
Detering meant to outwit them: he fastened a thin wire to the roof and
suspended his bread from it. During the night when he switched on his
pocket-torch he saw the wire swinging to and fro. On the bread was riding a
fat rat.

At last we put a stop to it. We cannot afford to throw the bread away,
because already we have practically nothing left to eat in the morning, so
we carefully cut off the bits of bread that the animals have gnawed.

The slices we cut off are heaped together in the middle of the floor.
Each man takes out his spade and lies down prepared to strike. Detering,
Kropp, and Kat hold their pocket-lamps ready.

After a few minutes we hear the first shuffling and tugging. It grows,
now it is the sound of many little feet. Then the torches switch on and every
man strikes at the heap, which scatters with a rush. The result is good. We
toss the bits of rat over the parapet and again lie in wait.

Several times we repeat the process. At last the beasts get wise to it, or
perhaps they have scented the blood. They return no more. Nevertheless,
before morning the remainder of the bread on the floor has been carried off.

In the adjoining sector they attacked two large cats and a dog, bit them
to death and devoured them.

Next day there is an issue of Edamer cheese. Each man gets almost a
quarter of a cheese. In one way that is all to the good, for Edamer is tasty—

but in another way it is vile, because the fat red balls have long been a sign
of a bad time coming. Our forebodings increase as rum is served out. We
drink it of course; but are not greatly comforted.

For days we loaf about and make war on the rats. Ammunition and
hand-grenades become more plentiful. We even overhaul the bayonets—
that is to say, the ones that have a saw on the blunt edge. If the fellows over
there catch a man with one of those he's killed at sight. In the next sector
some of our men were found whose noses were cut off and their eyes poked
out with their own saw-bayonets. Their mouths and noses were stuffed with
sawdust so that they suffocated.

Some of the recruits have bayonets of this kind; we take them away and
give them the ordinary kind.

But the bayonet has practically lost its importance. It is usually the
fashion now to charge with bombs and spades only. The sharpened spade is
a more handy and many-sided weapon; not only can it be used for jabbing a
man under the chin, but it is much better for striking with because of its
greater weight, and if one hits between the neck and shoulder it easily
cleaves as far down as the chest. The bayonet frequently jams on the thrust
and then a man has to kick hard on the other fellow's belly to pull it out
again; and in the interval he may easily get one himself. And what's more
the blade often gets broken off.

At night they send over gas. We expect the attack to follow and lie with
our masks on, ready to tear them off as soon as the first shadow appears.

Dawn approaches without anything happening—only the everlasting,
nerve-wracking roll behind the enemy lines, trains, trains, lorries, lorries;
but what are they concentrating? Our artillery fires on it continually, but
still it does not cease.

We have tired faces and avoid each other's eyes. "It will be like the
Somme," says Kat gloomily. "There we were shelled steadily for seven days
and nights." Kat has lost all his fun since we have been here, which is bad,
for Kat is an old front-hog, and can smell what is coming. Only Tjaden

seems pleased with the good rations and the rum; he thinks we might even
go back to rest without anything happening at all.

It almost looks like it. Day after day passes. At night I squat in the
listening-post. Above me the rockets and parachute-lights shoot up and float
down again. I am cautious and tense, my heart thumps. My eyes turn again
and again to the luminous dial of my watch; the hands will not budge. Sleep
hangs on my eyelids, I work my toes in my boots in order to keep awake.
Nothing happens till I am relieved;—only the everlasting rolling over there.
Gradually we grow calmer and play skat and poker continually. Perhaps we
will be lucky.

All day the sky is hung with observation balloons. There is a rumour
that the enemy are going to put tanks over and use low-flying planes for the
attack. But that interests us less than what we hear of the new flame-
throwers.

* *

We wake up in the middle of the night. The earth booms. Heavy fire is
falling on us. We crouch into corners. We distinguish shells of every calibre.

Each man lays hold of his things and looks again every minute to
reassure himself that they are still there. The dug-out heaves, the night roars
and flashes. We look at each other in the momentary flashes of light, and
with pale faces and pressed lips shake our heads.

Every man is aware of the heavy shells tearing down the parapet,
rooting up the embankment and demolishing the upper layers of concrete.
When a shell lands in the trench we note how the hollow, furious blast is
like a blow from the paw of a raging beast of prey. Already by morning a
few of the recruits are green and vomiting. They are too inexperienced.

Slowly the grey light trickles into the post and pales the flashes of the
shells. Morning is come. The explosion of mines mingles with the gun-fire.
That is the most dementing convulsion of all. The whole region where they
go up becomes one grave.

The reliefs go out, the observers stagger in, covered with dirt, and
trembling. One lies down in silence in the corner and eats, the other, a
reservist-reinforcement, sobs; twice he has been flung over the parapet by
the blast of the explosions without getting any more than shell-shock.

The recruits are eyeing him. We must watch them, these things are
catching, already some lips begin to quiver. It is good that it is growing
daylight; perhaps the attack will come before noon.

The bombardment does not diminish. It is falling in the rear too. As far
as one can see it spouts fountains of mud and iron. A wide belt is being
raked.

The attack does not come, but the bombardment continues. Slowly we
become mute. Hardly a man speaks. We cannot make ourselves understood.

Our trench is almost gone. At many places it is only eighteen inches
high, it is broken by holes, and craters, and mountains of earth. A shell
lands square in front of our post. At once it is dark. We are buried and must
dig ourselves out. After an hour the entrance is clear again, and we are
calmer because we have had something to do.

Our company commander scrambles in and reports that two dug-outs
are gone. The recruits calm themselves when they see him. He says that an
attempt will be made to bring up food this evening.

That sounds reassuring. No one had thought of it except Tjaden. Now
the outside world seems to draw a little nearer: if food can be brought up,
think the recruits, then it can't really be so bad.

We do not disabuse them; we know that food is as important as
ammunition and only for that reason must be brought up.

But it miscarries. A second party goes out, and it also turns back. Finally
Kat tries, and even he reappears without accomplishing anything. No one
gets through, not even a fly is small enough to get through such a barrage.

We pull in our belts tighter and chew every mouthful three times as
long. Still the food does not last out; we are damnably hungry. I take out a
scrap of bread, eat the white and put the crust back in my knapsack; from
time to time I nibble at it.

* *

The night is unbearable. We cannot sleep, but stare ahead of us and
doze. Tjaden regrets that we wasted the gnawed pieces of bread on the rats.
We would gladly have them again to eat now. We are short of water, too,
but not seriously yet.

Towards morning, while it is still dark, there is some excitement.
Through the entrance rushes in a swarm of fleeing rats that try to storm the
walls. Torches light up the confusion. Everyone yells and curses and
slaughters. The madness and despair of many hours unloads itself in this
outburst. Faces are distorted, arms strike out, the beasts scream; we just stop
in time to avoid attacking one another.

The onslaught has exhausted us. We lie down to wait again. It is a
marvel that our post has had no casualties so far. It is one of the few deep
dug-outs.

A corporal creeps in; he has a loaf of bread with him. Three people have
had the luck to get through during the night and bring some provisions.
They say the bombardment extends undiminished as far as the artillery
lines. It is a mystery where the enemy gets all his shells.

We wait and wait. By midday what I expected happens. One of the
recruits has a fit. I have been watching him for a long time, grinding his
teeth and opening and shutting his fists. These hunted, protruding eyes, we
know them too well. During the last few hours he has had merely the
appearance of calm. He had collapsed like a rotten tree.

Now he stands up, stealthily creeps across the floor, hesitates a moment
and then glides towards the door. I intercept him and say: "Where are you
going?"

"I'll be back in a minute," says he, and tries to push past me.

"Wait a bit, the shelling will stop soon."

He listens and for a moment his eye becomes clear. Then again he has
the glowering eyes of a mad dog, he is silent, he shoves me aside.

"One minute, lad," I say. Kat notices. Just as the recruit shakes me off
Kat jumps in and we hold him.

Then he begins to rave: "Leave me alone, let me go out, I will go out!"

He won't listen to anything and hits out, his mouth is wet and pours out
words, half choked, meaningless words. It is a case of claustrophobia, he
feels as though he is suffocating here and wants to get out at any price. If
we let him go he would run about everywhere regardless of cover. He is not
the first.

Though he raves and his eyes roll, it can't be helped, we have to give
him a hiding to bring him to his senses. We do it quickly and mercilessly,
and at last he sits down quietly. The others have turned pale; let's hope it
deters them. This bombardment is too much for the poor devils, they have
been sent straight from a recruiting-depot into a barrage that is enough to
turn an old soldier's hair grey.

After this affair the sticky, close atmosphere works more than ever on
our nerves. We sit as if in our graves waiting only to be closed in.

Suddenly it howls and flashes terrifically, the dug-out cracks in all its
joints under a direct hit, fortunately only a light one that the concrete blocks
are able to withstand. It rings metallically, the walls reel, rifles, helmets,
earth, mud, and dust fly everywhere. Sulphur fumes pour in.

If we were in one of those light dug-outs that they have been building
lately instead of this deep one, not one of us would now be alive.

But the effect is bad enough even so. The recruit starts to rave again and
two others follow suit. One jumps up and rushes out, we have trouble with

the other two. I start after the one who escapes and wonder whether to shoot
him in the leg—then it shrieks again, I fling myself down and when I stand
up the wall of the trench is plastered with smoking splinters, lumps of flesh,
and bits of uniform. I scramble back.

The first recruit seems actually to have gone insane. He butts his head
against the wall like a goat. We must try to-night to take him to the rear.
Meanwhile we bind him, but in such a way that in case of attack he can be
released at once.

Kat suggests a game of skat: it is easier when a man has something to
do. But it is no use, we listen for every explosion that comes close,
miscount the tricks, and fail to follow suit. We have to give it up. We sit as
though in a hissing boiler that is being belaboured from without on all sides.

Night again. We are deadened by the strain—a deadly tension that
scrapes along one's spine like a gapped knife. Our legs refuse to move, our
hands tremble, our bodies are a thin skin stretched painfully over repressed
madness, over an almost irresistible, bursting roar. We have neither flesh
nor muscles any longer, we dare not look at one another for fear of some
incalculable thing. So we shut our teeth—it will end—it will end—perhaps
we will come through.

Suddenly the nearer explosions cease. The shelling continues but it has
lifted and falls behind us, our trench is free. We seize the hand-grenades,
pitch them out in front of the dug-out and jump after them. The
bombardment has stopped and a heavy barrage now falls behind us. The
attack has come.

No one would believe that in this howling waste there could still be
men; but steel helmets now appear on all sides out of the trench, and fifty
yards from us a machine-gun is already in position and barking.

The wire-entanglements are torn to pieces. Yet they offer some obstacle.
We see the storm-troops coming. Our artillery opens fire. Machine-guns
rattle, rifles crack. The charge works its way across. Haie and Kropp begin
with the hand-grenades. They throw as fast as they can, others pass them,
the handles with the strings already pulled. Haie throws seventy-five yards,

Kropp sixty, it has been measured, the distance is important. The enemy as
they run cannot do much before they are within forty yards.

We recognize the distorted faces, the smooth helmets: they are French.
They have already suffered heavily when they reach the remnants of the
barbed wire entanglements. A whole line has gone down before our
machine-guns; then we have a lot of stoppages and they come nearer.

I see one of them, his face upturned, fall into a wire cradle. His body
collapses, his hands remain suspended as though he were praying. Then his
body drops clean away and only his hands with the stumps of his arms, shot
off, now hang in the wire.

The moment we are about to retreat three faces rise up from the ground
in front of us. Under one of the helmets a dark pointed beard and two eyes
that are fastened on me. I raise my hand, but I cannot throw into those
strange eyes; for one mad moment the whole slaughter whirls like a circus
round me, and these two eyes that are alone motionless; then the head rises
up, a hand, a movement, and my hand-grenade flies through the air and into
him.

We make for the rear, pull wire cradles into the trench and leave bombs
behind us with the string pulled, which ensure us a fiery retreat. The
machine-guns are already firing from the next position.

We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves
against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do
we know of men in this moment when Death with hands and helmets is
hunting us down—now, for the first time in three days we can see his face,
now, for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad
anger. No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy
and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and be revenged.

We crouch behind every corner, behind every barrier of barbed wire,
and hurl heaps of explosives at the feet of the advancing enemy before we
run. The blast of the hand-grenades impinges powerfully on our arms and
legs; crouching like cats we run on, overwhelmed by this wave that bears us
along, that fills us with ferocity, turning us into thugs, into murderers, into

God only knows what devils; this wave that multiplies our strength with
fear and madness and greed of life, seeking and fighting for nothing but our
deliverance. If your own father came over with them you would not hesitate
to fling a bomb into him.

The forward trenches have been abandoned. Are they still trenches?
They are blown to pieces, annihilated—there are only broken bits of
trenches, holes linked by tracks; nests of craters, that is all. But the enemy's
casualties increase. They did not count on so much resistance.

* *

It is nearly noon. The sun blazes hotly, the sweat stings in our eyes, we
wipe it off on our sleeves and often blood with it. At last we reach a trench
that is in a somewhat better condition. It is manned and ready for the
counter-attack, it receives us. Our guns open up in full blast and cut off the
enemy attack.

The lines behind us stop. They can advance no farther. The attack is
crushed by our artillery. We watch. The fire lifts a hundred yards and we
break forward. Beside me a lance-corporal has his head torn off. He runs a
few steps more while the blood spouts from his neck like a fountain.

It does not come quite to hand-to-hand fighting; they are driven back.
We arrive once again at our shattered trench and pass on beyond it.

Oh, this turning back again! We reach the shelter of the reserves and
yearn to creep in and disappear;—but instead we must turn round and
plunge again into the horror. If we were not automata at that moment we
would continue lying there, exhausted, and without will. But we are swept
forward again, powerless, madly savage and raging; we will kill, for they
are still our mortal enemies, their rifles and bombs are aimed against us, and
if we don't destroy them, they will destroy us.

The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under the
sun's rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy world of
automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our
heads are debauched with stupor—thus we stagger forward, and into our

pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth
with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers, who lie there—it
can't be helped—who cry and clutch at our legs as we spring away over
them.

We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control
ourselves when our hunted glance lights on the form of some other man. We
are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are
still able to run and to kill.

A young Frenchman lags behind, he is overtaken, he puts up his hands,
in one he still holds his revolver—does he mean to shoot or to give himself
up?—a blow from a spade cleaves through his face. A second sees it and
tries to run farther; a bayonet jabs into his back. He leaps in the air, his arms
thrown wide, his mouth wide open, yelling; he staggers, in his back the
bayonet quivers. A third throws away his rifle, cowers down with his hands
before his eyes. He is left behind with a few other prisoners to carry off the
wounded.

Suddenly in the pursuit we reach the enemy line.

We are so close on the heels of our retreating enemies that we reach it
almost at the same time as they. In this way we suffer few casualties. A
machine-gun barks, but is silenced with a bomb. Nevertheless, the couple of
seconds has sufficed to give us five stomach wounds. With the butt of his
rifle Kat smashes to pulp the face of one of the unwounded machine-
gunners. We bayonet the others before they have time to get out their
bombs. Then thirstily we drink the water they have for cooling the gun.

Everywhere wire-cutters are snapping, planks are thrown across the
entanglements, we jump through the narrow entrances into the trenches.
Haie strikes his spade into the neck of a gigantic Frenchman and throws the
first hand-grenade; we duck behind a breastwork for a few seconds, then the
whole section of trench before us is empty. The next throw whizzes
obliquely over the corner and clears a passage; as we run past we toss
handfuls down into the dug-outs, the earth shudders, it crashes, dully and
stifled, we stumble over slippery lumps of flesh, over yielding bodies; I fall
into an open belly on which lies a clean, new officer's cap.

The fight ceases. We lose touch with the enemy. We cannot stay here
long but must retire under cover of our artillery to our own position. No
sooner do we know this than we dive into the nearest dug-outs, and with the
utmost haste seize on whatever provisions we can see, especially the tins of
corned beef and butter, before we clear out.

We get back pretty well. There has been no further attack by the enemy.
We lie for an hour panting and resting before anyone speaks. We are so
completely played out that in spite of our great hunger we do not think of
the provisions. Then gradually we become something like men again.

The corned beef over there is famous along the whole front.
Occasionally it has been the chief reason for a flying raid on our part, for
our nourishment is generally very bad; we have a constant hunger.

We bagged five tins altogether. The fellows over there are well looked
after; it seems a luxury to us with our hunger-pangs, our turnip jam, and
meat so scarce that we simply grab at it. Haie has scored a thin loaf of white
French bread, and stuck it in behind his belt like a spade. It is a bit bloody at
one corner, but that can be cut off.

It is a good thing we have something decent to eat at last; we still have a
use for all our strength. Enough to eat is just as valuable as a good dug-out;
it can save our lives; that is the reason we are so greedy for it.

Tjaden has captured two water-bottles full of cognac. We pass them
round.

* *

The evening benediction begins. Night comes, out of the craters rise the
mists. It looks as though the holes were full of ghostly secrets. The white
vapour creeps painfully round before it ventures to steal away over the
edge. Then long streaks stretch from crater to crater.

It is chilly. I am on sentry and stare into the darkness. My strength is
exhausted as always after an attack, and so it is hard for me to be alone with

my thoughts. They are not properly thoughts; they are memories which in
my weakness turn homeward and strangely move me.

The parachute-lights shoot upwards—and I see a picture, a summer
evening, I am in the cathedral cloister and look at the tall rose trees that
bloom in the middle of the little cloister garden where the monks lie buried.
Around the walls are the stone carvings of the Stations of the Cross. No one
is there. A great quietness rules in this blossoming quadrangle, the sun lies
warm on the heavy grey stones, I place my hand upon them and feel the
warmth. At the right-hand corner the green cathedral spire ascends into the
pale blue sky of the evening. Between the glowing columns of the cloister
is the cool darkness that only churches have, and I stand there and wonder
whether, when I am twenty, I shall have experienced the bewildering
emotions of love.

The image is alarmingly near; it touches me before it dissolves in the
light of the next star-shell.

I lay hold of my rifle to see that it is in trim. The barrel is wet, I take it
in my hand and rub off the moisture with my fingers.

Between the meadows behind our town there stands a line of old
poplars by a stream. They were visible from a great distance, and although
they grew on one bank only, we called them the poplar avenue. Even as
children we had a great love for them, they drew us vaguely thither, we
played truant the whole day by them and listened to their rustling. We sat
beneath them on the bank of the stream and let our feet hang over in the
bright, swift waters. The pure fragrance of the water and the melody of the
wind in the poplars held our fancies. We loved them dearly, and the image
of those days still makes my heart pause in its beating.

It is strange that all the memories that come have these two qualities.
They are always completely calm, that is predominant in them; and even if
they are not really calm, they become so. They are soundless apparitions
that speak to me, with looks and gestures, silently, without any word—and
it is the alarm of their silence that forces me to lay hold of my sleeve and
my rifle lest I should abandon myself to the liberation and allurement in

which my body would dilate and gently pass away into the still forces that
lie behind these things.

They are quiet in this way, because quietness is so unattainable for us
now. At the front there is no quietness and the curse of the front reaches so
far that we never pass beyond it. Even in the remote depots and rest-areas
the droning and the muffled noise of shelling is always in our ears. We are
never so far off that it is no more to be heard. But these last few days it has
been unbearable.

Their stillness is the reason why these memories of former times do not
awaken desire so much as sorrow—a strange, inapprehensible melancholy.
Once we had such desires—but they return not. They are past, they belong
to another world that is gone from us. In the barracks they called forth a
rebellious, wild craving for their return; for then they were still bound to us,
we belonged to them and they to us, even though we were already absent
from them. They appeared in the soldiers' songs which we sang as we
marched between the glow of the dawn and the black silhouettes of the
forests to drill on the moor, they were a powerful remembrance that was in
us and came from us.

But here in the trenches they are completely lost to us. They arise no
more; we are dead and they stand remote on the horizon, they are an
apparition, a mysterious reflection drawing us home, that we fear and love
without hope. They are strong and our desire is strong—but they are
unattainable, and we know it.

And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us we would
hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them
into us could not arise again. We long to be in them and to move in them;
we long to remember and to love them and to be stirred by the sight of
them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade;
those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a
mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not.

We could never again, as the same beings, take part in those scenes. It
was not any recognition of their beauty and their significance that attracted
us, but the communion, the feeling of a comradeship with the things and

events of our existence, which cut us off and made the world of our parents
a thing incomprehensible to us—for then we surrendered ourselves to
events and were lost in them, and the least little thing was enough to carry
us down the stream of eternity. Perhaps it was only the privilege of our
youth, but as yet we recognized no limits and saw nowhere an end. We had
that thrill of expectation in the blood which united us with the course of our
days.

To-day we would pass through the scenes of our youth like travellers.
We are burnt up by hard facts; like tradesmen we understand distinctions,
and like butchers, necessities. We are no longer untroubled—we are
indifferent. We long to be there; but could we live there?

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude
and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.

* *

My hands grow cold and my flesh creeps; and yet the night is warm.
Only the mist is cold, this mysterious mist that trails the dead before us and
sucks from them their last, creeping life. By morning they will be pale and
green and their blood congealed and black.

Still the parachute-rockets shoot up and cast their pitiless light over the
stony landscape, which is full of craters and frozen lights like a moon. The
blood beneath my skin brings fear and restlessness into my thoughts. They
become feeble and tremble, they desire warmth and life. They cannot
endure without sympathy and communion, they are disordered before the
naked picture of despair.

I hear the rattle of the mess-tins and immediately feel a strong desire for
warm food; it would do me good and comfort me. Painfully I force myself
to wait until I am relieved.

Then I go into the dug-out and find a mug of barley. It is cooked in fat
and tastes good, I eat it slowly. I remain quiet, though the others are in a
better mood, for the shelling has died down.

* *

The days go by and the incredible hours follow one another as a matter
of course. Attacks alternate with counter-attacks and slowly the dead pile up
in the field of craters between the trenches. We are able to bring in most of
the wounded that do not lie too far off. But many have long to wait and we
listen to them dying.

For one of them we search two days in vain. He must be lying on his
belly and unable to turn over. Otherwise it is hard to understand why we
cannot find him; for it is only when a man has his mouth close to the
ground that it is impossible to gauge the direction of his cry.

He must have been badly hit—one of those nasty wounds, neither so
severe that they exhaust the body at once and a man dreams on in a half-
swoon, nor so light that a man endures the pain in the hope of becoming
well again. Kat thinks he has either a broken pelvis or a shot through the
spine. His chest cannot have been injured otherwise he would not have such
strength to cry out. And if it were any other kind of wound it would be
possible to see him moving.

He grows gradually hoarser. The voice sounds so desperate that it
prevails everywhere. The first night some of our fellows go out three times
to look for him. But when they think they have located him and crawl
across, next time they hear the voice it seems to come from somewhere else
altogether.

We search in vain until dawn. We scrutinize the field all day with
glasses, but discover nothing. On the second day the calls are fainter; that
will be because his lips and mouth have become dry.

Our company commander has promised special leave with three days
extra to anyone who finds him. That is a powerful inducement, but we
would do all that is possible without that; for his cry is terrible. Kat and
Kropp even go out in the afternoon, and Albert gets the lobe of his ear shot
off in consequence. It is to no purpose, they come back without him.

It is easy to understand what he cries. At first he called only for help—
the second night he must have some delirium, he talks with his wife and his
children, we often detect the name Elise. To-day he merely weeps. By
evening the voice dwindles to a croaking. But it persists still through the
whole night. We hear it so distinctly because the wind blows toward our
line. In the morning when we suppose he must already have long gone to
his rest, there comes across to us one last gurgling rattle.

The days are hot and the dead lie unburied. We cannot fetch them all in,
if we did we should not know what to do with them. The shells will bury
them. Many have their bellies swollen up like balloons. They hiss, belch,
and make movements. The gases in them make noises.

The sky is blue and without clouds. In the evening it grows sultry and
the heat rises from the earth. When the wind blows toward us it brings the
smell of blood, which is heavy and sweet. This deathly exhalation from the
shell holes seems to be a mixture of chloroform and putrefaction, and fills
us with nausea and retching.

* *

The nights become quiet and the hunt for copper driving-bands and the
silken parachutes of the French star-shells begins. Why the driving-bands
are so desirable no one knows exactly. The collectors merely assert that
they are valuable. Some have collected so many that they will stoop under
the weight of them when we go back.

But Haie at least gives a reason. He intends to give them to his girl to
supplement her garters. At this the Friesians explode with mirth. They slap
their knees: "By Jove though, he's a wit, Haie is, he's got brains." Tjaden
especially can hardly contain himself; he takes the largest of the rings in his
hand and every now and then puts his leg through it to show how much
slack there is.

"Haie, man, she must have legs like, legs——" his thoughts mount
somewhat higher, "and a behind too she must have, like a—like an
elephant!"

He cannot get over it. "I wish I could play hot-hand with her once, my
hat——"

Haie beams, proud that his girl should receive so much appreciation.

"She's a nice bit," he says with self-satisfaction.

The parachutes are turned to more practical uses. According to the size
of the bust three or perhaps four will make a blouse. Kropp and I use them
as handkerchiefs. The others send them home. If the women could see at
what risk these bits of rag are often obtained, they would be horrified.

Kat surprises Tjaden endeavouring with perfect equanimity to knock the
driving-band off a dud. If anyone else had tried it the thing would have
exploded, but Tjaden always has his luck with him.

One morning two butterflies play in front of our trench. They are
brimstone-butterflies, with red spots on their yellow wings. What can they
be looking for here? There is not a plant nor a flower for miles. They settle
on the teeth of a skull. The birds too are just as carefree, they have long
since accustomed themselves to the war. Every morning larks ascend from
No Man's Land. A year ago we watched them nesting; the young ones grew
up too.

We have a spell from the rats in the trench. They are in No Man's Land
—we know what for. They grow fat; when we see one we have a crack at it.
At night we hear again the rolling behind the enemy lines. All day we have
only the normal shelling, so that we are able to repair the trenches. There is
always plenty of amusement, the airmen see to that. There are countless
fights for us to watch every day.

Battle planes don't trouble us, but the observation planes we hate like
the plague; they put the artillery on to us. A couple of minutes after they
appear, shrapnel and high-explosives begin to drop on us. We lose eleven
men in one day that way, and five of them stretcher-bearers. Two are so
smashed that Tjaden remarks you could scrape them off the wall of the
trench with a spoon and bury them in a mess-tin. Another has the lower part
of his body and his legs torn off. Dead, his chest leans against the side of

the trench, his face is lemon-yellow, in his beard stills burns a cigarette. It
glows until it dies out on his lips.

We put the dead in a large shell-hole. So far there are three layers, one
on top of the other.

* *

Suddenly the shelling begins to pound again. Soon we are sitting up
once more with the rigid tenseness of blank anticipation.

Attack, counter-attack, charge, repulse—these are words, but what
things they signify! We have lost a good many men, mostly recruits.
Reinforcements have again been sent up to our sector. It is one of the new
regiments, composed of young fellows called up during last year. They have
had hardly any training, and are sent into the field with only a theoretical
knowledge. They do know what a hand-grenade is, it is true, but they have
very little idea of cover, and what is most important of all, have no eye for
it. A fold in the ground has to be quite eighteen inches high before they can
see it.

Although we need reinforcement, the recruits give us almost more
trouble than they are worth. They are helpless in this grim fighting area,
they fall like flies. The present method of fighting from posts demands
knowledge and experience; a man must have a feeling for the contours of
the ground, an ear for the sound and character of the shells, must be able to
decide beforehand where they will drop, how they will burst, and how to
shelter from them.

The young recruits of course know none of these things. They get killed
simply because they can hardly tell shrapnel from high-explosive, they are
mown down because they are listening anxiously to the roar of the big coal-
boxes falling far in the rear, and miss the light, piping whistle of the low
spreading little daisy-cutters. They flock together like sheep instead of
scattering, and even the wounded are shot down like hares by the airmen.

Their pale turnip faces, their pitiful clenched hands, the miserable
courage of these poor devils, the desperate charges and attacks made by

these poor brave devils, who are so terrified that they dare not cry out
loudly, but with battered chests and torn bellies and arms and legs only
whimper softly for their mothers and cease as soon as one looks at them.

Their sharp, downy, dead faces have the awful expressionlessness of
dead children.

It brings a lump into the throat to see how they go over, and run and fall.
A man would like to spank them, they are so stupid, and to take them by the
arm and lead them away from here where they have no business to be. They
wear grey coats and trousers and boots, but for most of them the uniform is
far too big, it hangs on their limbs, their shoulders are too narrow, their
bodies too slight; no uniform was ever made to these childish
measurements.

Between five and ten recruits fall to every old hand.

A surprise gas-attack carries off a lot of them. They have not yet learned
what to do. We found one dug-out full of them, with blue heads and black
lips. Some of them in a shell hole took their masks off too soon; they did
not know that the gas lies longest in the hollows; when they saw others on
top without masks they pulled theirs off too and swallowed enough to
scorch their lungs. Their condition is hopeless, they choke to death with
hæmorrhages and suffocation.

* *

In one part of the trench I suddenly run into Himmelstoss. We dive into
the same dug-out. Breathless we are all lying one beside the other waiting
for the charge.

When we run out again, although I am very excited, I suddenly think:
"Where's Himmelstoss?" Quickly I jump back into the dug-out and find him
with a small scratch lying in a corner pretending to be wounded. His face
looks sullen. He is in a panic; he is new to it too. But it makes me mad that
the young recruits should be out there and he here.

"Get out!" I spit.

He does not stir, his lips quiver, his moustache twitches.

"Out!" I repeat.

He draws up his legs, crouches back against the wall, and shows his
teeth like a cur.

I seize him by the arm and try to pull him up. He barks.

That is too much for me. I grab him by the neck and shake him like a
sack, his head jerks from side to side.

"You lump, will you get out—you hound, you skunk, sneak out of it,
would you?" His eye becomes glassy, I knock his head against the wall
—"You cow"—I kick him in the ribs—"You swine"—I push him toward the
door and shove him out head first.

Another wave of our attack has just come up. A lieutenant is with them.
He sees us and yells; "Forward, forward, join in, follow." And the word of
command does what all my banging could not. Himmelstoss hears the
order, looks round him as if awakened, and follows on.

I come after and watch him go over. Once more he is the smart
Himmelstoss of the parade-ground, he has even outstripped the lieutenant
and is far ahead.

Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns,
hand-grenades—words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.

Our faces are encrusted, our thoughts are devastated, we are weary to
death; when the attack comes we shall have to strike many of the men with
our fists to waken them and make them come with us—our eyes are burnt,
our hands are torn, our knees bleed, our elbows are raw.

How long has it been? Weeks—months—years? Only days. We see time
pass in the colourless faces of the dying, we cram food into us, we run, we
throw, we shoot, we kill, we lie about, we are feeble and spent, and nothing
supports us but the knowledge that there are still feebler, still more spent,

still more helpless ones there who, with staring eyes, look upon us as gods
that escape death many times.

In the few hours of rest we teach them. "There, see that waggle-top?
That's a mortar coming. Keep down, it will go clean over. But if it comes
this way, then run for it. You can run from a mortar."

We sharpen their ears to the malicious, hardly audible buzz of the
smaller shells that are not so easily distinguished. They must pick them out
from the general din by their insect-like hum—we explain to them that
these are far more dangerous than the big ones that can be heard long
beforehand.

We show them how to take cover from aircraft, how to simulate a dead
man when one is overrun in an attack, how to time hand-grenades so that
they explode half a second before hitting the ground; we teach them to fling
themselves into holes as quick as lightning before the shells with
instantaneous fuses; we show them how to clean up a trench with a handful
of bombs; we explain the difference between the fuse-length of the enemy
bombs and our own; we put them wise to the sound of gas shells;—show
them all the tricks that can save them from death.

They listen, they are docile—but when it begins again, in their
excitement they do everything wrong.

Haie Westhus drags off with a great wound in his back through which
the lung pulses at every breath. I can only press his hand; "It's all up, Paul,"
he groans and bites his arm because of the pain.

We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run
with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their splintered stumps into the
next shell-hole; a lance-corporal crawls a mile and a half on his hands
dragging his smashed knee after him; another goes to the dressing station
and over his clasped hands bulge his intestines; we see men without
mouths, without jaws, without faces; we find one man who has held the
artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in order not to bleed to death.
The sun goes down, night comes, the shells whine, life is at an end.

Still the little piece of convulsed earth in which we lie is held. We have
yielded no more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to the enemy. But
on every yard there lies a dead man.

* *

We have been relieved. The wheels roll beneath us, we stand dully, and
when the call "Mind—wire" comes, we bend our knees. It was summer
when we came up, the trees were still green, now it is autumn and the night
is grey and wet. The lorries stop, we climb out—a confused heap, a remnant
of many names. On either side stand people, dark, calling out the numbers
of the regiments, the companies. And at each call a little group separates
itself off, a small handful of dirty, pallid soldiers, a dreadfully small
handful, and a dreadfully small remnant.

Now someone is calling the number of our company, it is, yes, the
Company-Commander, he has got one too, his arm is in a sling. We go over
to him and I recognize Kat and Albert, we stand together, lean against each
other, and look at one another.

And we hear the number of our company called again and again. He
will call a long time, they do not hear him in the hospitals and shell-holes.

Once again: "Second Company, this way!"

And then more softly: "Nobody else Second Company?"

He is silent, and then huskily he says: "Is that all?" and gives the order:
"Number!"

The morning is grey, it was still summer when we came up, and we
were one hundred and fifty strong. Now we freeze, it is autumn, the leaves
rustle, the voices flutter out wearily: "One—two—three—four——" and
cease at thirty-two. And there is a long silence before the voice asks:
"Anyone else?"—and waits and then says softly: "In squads——" and then
breaks off and is only able to finish: "Second Company——" with
difficulty: "Second Company—march easy!"

A line, a short line trudges off into the morning.

Thirty-two men.

CHAPTER VII

They have taken us farther back than usual to a field depot so that we
can be re-organized. Our company needs more than a hundred
reinforcements.

In the meantime, when we are off duty, we loaf around. After a couple
of days Himmelstoss comes up to us. He has had the bounce knocked out of
him since he has been in the trenches and wants to get on good terms with
us. I am willing enough, because I saw how he brought Haie Westhus in
when he was hit in the back. Besides he's decent enough to treat us at the
canteen when we are out of funds. Only Tjaden is still reserved and
suspicious.

But he is won over, too, when Himmelstoss tells us that he is taking the
place of the sergeant-cook who has gone on leave. As a proof he produces
on the spot two pounds of sugar for us and a half-pound of butter specially
for Tjaden. He even sees to it that we are detailed the next two or three days
to the cook house for potato and turnip peeling. The grub he gives us there
is real officers' fare.

Thus for the moment we have the two things a soldier needs for
contentment: good food and rest. That's not much when one comes to think
of it. A couple of years ago we would have despised ourselves terribly. But
now we are quite happy. It is all a matter of habit—even the front line.

Habit is the explanation of why we seem to forget things so quickly.
Yesterday we were under fire, to-day we act the fool and go foraging
through the countryside, to-morrow we go up to the trenches again. We
forget nothing really. But so long as we have to stay here in the field, the

front-line days, when they are past, sink down in us like a stone; they are
too serious for us to be able to reflect on them at once. If we did that, we
should have been destroyed long ago. I soon found out this much:—terror
can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;—but it kills, if a man thinks
about it.

Just as we turn into animals when we go up to the line, because that is
the only thing which brings us through safely, so we turn into wags and
loafers when we are out resting. We can do nothing else, it is a sheer
necessity. We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with
feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peace time,
would be out of place here. Kemmerich is dead, Haie Westhus is dying,
they will have a job with Hans Kramer's body at the Judgment Day, piecing
it together after a direct hit; Martens has no legs any more, Meyer is dead,
Max is dead, Beyer is dead, Hammerling is dead, there are a hundred and
twenty wounded men lying somewhere or other; it is a damnable business,
but what has it to do with us now—we live. If it were possible for us to save
them, then it would be seen how much we cared—we would have a shot at
it though we went under ourselves; for we can be damned quixotic when we
like; fear we do not know much about—terror of death, yes; but that is a
different matter, that is physical.

But our comrades are dead, we cannot help them, they have their rest—
and who knows what is waiting for us? We will make ourselves comfortable
and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and
smoke so that the hours are not wasted. Life is short.

* *

The terror of the front sinks deep down when we turn our backs upon it;
we make grim, coarse jests about it, when a man dies, then we say he had
nipped off his turd, and so we speak of everything; that keeps us from going
mad; as long as we take it that way we maintain our own resistance.

But we do not forget. It's all rot that they put in the war-news about the
good humour of the troops, how they are arranging dances almost before
they are out of the front-line. We don't act like that because we are in a good
humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to

pieces. If it were not so we could not hold out much longer; our humour
becomes more bitter every month.

And this I know: all these things that now, while we are still in the war,
sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall
begin the disentanglement of life and death.

The days, the weeks, the years out here shall come back again, and our
dead comrades shall then stand up again and march with us, our heads shall
be clear, we shall have a purpose, and so we shall march, our dead
comrades beside us, the years at the Front behind us:—against whom,
against whom?

* *

Some time ago there was an army theatre in these parts. Coloured
posters of the performances are still sticking on a hoarding. With wide eyes
Kropp and I stand in front of it. We can hardly credit that such things still
exist. A girl in a light summer dress, with a red patent-leather belt about her
hips! She is standing with one hand on a railing and with the other she holds
a straw hat. She wears white stockings and white shoes, fine buckle shoes
with high heels. Behind her smiles a blue lake with white-horses, at the side
is a bright bay. She is a lovely girl with a delicate nose, red lips, and slender
legs, wonderfully clean and well cared for, she certainly bathes twice a day
and never has any dirt under her nails. At most perhaps a bit of sand from
the beach.

Beside her stands a man in white trousers, a bluejacket, and sailor's cap;
but he interests us much less.

The girl on the poster is a wonder to us. We have quite forgotten that
there are such things, and even now we hardly believe our eyes. We have
seen nothing like it for years, nothing like it for happiness, beauty, and joy.
That is peace time, that is as it should be; we feel excited.

"Just look at those thin shoes though, she couldn't march many miles in
those," I say, and then begin to feel silly, for it is absurd to stand in front of
a picture like this and think of nothing but marching.

"How old would she be?" Kropp asks.

"About twenty-two at the most," I hazard.

"Then she would be older than us! She is not more than seventeen, let
me tell you!"

It gives us goose-flesh.

"That would be good, Albert, what do you think?"

He nods. "I have some white trousers at home too."

"White trousers," say I, "but a girl like that——"

We look askance at one another. There's not much to boast of here—two
ragged, stained, and dirty uniforms. It is hopeless to compete.

So we proceed to tear the young man with the white trousers off the
hoarding, taking care not to damage the girl. That is something towards it.

"We could go and get deloused, anyway," Kropp then suggests.

I am not very enthusiastic because it doesn't do one's clothes any good
and a man is lousy again inside two hours. But when we have considered
the picture once more, I declare myself willing. I even go farther.

"We might see if we could get a clean shirt as well——"

"Socks might be better," says Albert, not without reason.

"Yes, socks too perhaps. Let's go and explore a bit."

Then Leer and Tjaden stroll up; they look at the poster and immediately
the conversation becomes smutty. Leer was the first of our class to have
intercourse, and he gave stirring details of it. After his fashion he enjoys
himself over the picture, and Tjaden supports him nobly.

It does not distress us exactly. Who isn't smutty is no soldier; it merely
does not suit us at the moment, so we edge away and march off to the
delousing station with the same feeling as if it were a swell gentlemen's
outfitters.

* *

The houses in which we are billeted lie near the canal. On the other side
of the canal there are ponds flanked with poplars;—on the other side of the
canal there are women too.

The houses on our side have been abandoned. On the other side though
one occasionally sees inhabitants.

In the evening we go swimming. Three women come strolling along the
bank. They walk slowly and don't look away, although we have no bathing
suits.

Leer calls out to them. They laugh and stop to watch us. We fling
remarks at them in broken French, anything that comes into our heads,
hastily and all jumbled together, anything to detain them. They are not
specially wonderful pieces, but then where are such to be had about here?

There is one slim little brunette. Her teeth gleam when she laughs. She
has quick movements, her dress swings loosely about her legs. Although the
water is cold we are very jovial and do our best to interest them so that they
will stay. We try to make jokes and they answer with things we cannot
understand; we laugh and beckon. Tjaden is more crafty. He runs into the
house, gets a loaf of army bread and holds it up.

That produces a great effect. They nod and beckon us to come over. But
we don't dare to do that. It is forbidden to cross to the opposite bank. There
are sentries on all the bridges. It's impossible without a pass. So we indicate
that they should come over to us; but they shake their heads and point to the
bridge. They are not allowed to pass either. They turn away and walk
slowly down the canal, keeping along the tow-path all the way. We
accompany them swimming. After a few hundred yards they turn off and

point to a house that stands a little distance away among the trees and
shrubbery.

Leer asks if they live there.

They laugh—sure, that's their house.

We call out to them that we would like to come, sometime when the
guards cannot see us. At night. To-night.

They raise their hands, put them together, rest their faces on them and
shut their eyes. They understand. The slim brunette does a two-step. The
blonde girl twitters: "Bread—good——"

Eagerly we assure them that we will bring some with us. And other tasty
bits too, we roll our eyes and try to explain with our hands. Leer nearly
drowns trying to demonstrate a sausage. If it were necessary we would
promise them a whole quartermaster's store. They go off and frequently turn
and look back. We climb out on the bank on our side of the canal and watch
to see whether they go into the house for they might easily have been lying.
Then we swim back.

No one can cross the bridge without leave, so we will simply have to
swim over at night. We are full of excitement. We cannot last out without a
drink, so we go to the canteen where there is beer and a kind of punch.

We drink punch and tell one another lying tales of our experiences.
Each man gladly believes the other man's story, only waiting impatiently till
he can cap it with a taller one. Our hands are fidgety, we smoke countless
cigarettes, until Kropp says: "We might as well take them a couple of
cigarettes too." So we put some inside our caps to keep them.

The sky turns apple-green. There are four of us, but only three can go;
we must shake off Tjaden, so ply him with rum and punch until he rocks.
As it turns dark we go to our billets, Tjaden in the centre. We are all
glowing and full of a lust for adventure.

The little brunette is mine, we settled that by cutting for her.

Tjaden drops on his sack of straw and snores. Once he wakes up and
grins so craftily that we are alarmed and begin to think he is cheating, and
that we have given him the punch to no purpose. Then he drops back again
and sleeps on.

We each get hold of a whole army loaf and wrap it up in newspaper. The
cigarettes we put in too, as well as three good rations of liver-sausage that
were issued to us this evening. That makes a decent present.

We stow the things carefully in our boots; we have to take them to
protect our feet against treading on wire and broken glass on the other bank.
As we must swim for it we can take no other clothes. But it is not far and
quite dark.

We make off with our boots in our hands. Swiftly we slip into the water,
lie on our backs and swim, holding the boots with their contents up over our
heads.

We climb out carefully on the opposite bank, take out the packages and
put on our boots. We put the things under our arms. And so, all wet and
naked, clothed only in our boots, we break into a trot. We find the house at
once. It lies among the trees. Leer trips over a root and skins his elbows.

"No matter," he says gaily.

The windows are shuttered. We slip round the house and try to peer
through the cracks. Then we grow impatient. Suddenly Kropp hesitates:

"What if there's a Major in with them?"

"Then we just clear off," grins Leer, "he can try to read our regimental
numbers here," and smacks his behind.

The door of the court-yard stands open. Our boots make a great clatter.
The house door opens, a chink of light shines through and a woman cries
out in a scared voice.

"Ssh, ssh! camerade—bon ami—" we say, and show our packages
protestingly.

The other two are now on the scene, the door opens wide and the light
floods over us. They recognize us and all three burst into laughter at our
appearance. They rock and sway in the doorway, they laugh so much. How
supple their movements are!

"Un moment—" They disappear and throw us bits of clothing which we
gladly wrap round ourselves. Then we venture in. A small lamp burns in the
room, which is warm and smells a little of perfume. We unwrap our parcels
and hand them over to the women. Their eyes shine, it is obvious that they
are hungry.

Then we all become rather embarrassed. Leer makes the gestures of
eating, and then they come to life again and bring out plates and knives and
fall to on the food, and they hold up every slice of liver-sausage and admire
it before they eat it, and we sit proudly by.

They overwhelm us with their chatter;—we understand very little of it,
but we listen and the words sound friendly. No doubt we all look very
young. The little brunette strokes my hair and says what all the French
women say: "La guerre—grand malheur—pauvres garçons——"

I hold her arm tightly and press my lips into the palm of her hand. Her
fingers close round my face. Close above me are her bewildering eyes, the
soft brown of her skin and her red lips. Her mouth speaks words I do not
understand. Nor do I fully understand her eyes; they seem to say more than
we anticipated when we came here.

There are other rooms adjoining. In passing I see Leer, he has made a
great hit with the blonde. And he knows it, too. But I—I am lost in
remoteness, in weakness, and in a passion to which I yield myself
trustingly. My desires are strangely compounded of yearning and misery. I
feel giddy, there is nothing here that a man can hold on to. We have left our
boots at the door, they have given us slippers instead, and now nothing
remains to recall for me the assurance and self-confidence of the soldier: no

rifle, no belt, no tunic, no cap. I let myself drop into the unknown, come
what may—yet, in spite of all, I feel somewhat afraid.

The little brunette contracts her brows when she is thinking; but when
she talks they are still. And often the sound does not quite become a word
but suffocates or floats away over me half-finished; an arch, a pathway, a
comet. What have I known of it—what do I know of it?—The words of this
foreign tongue, that I hardly understand, they caress me to a quietness, in
which the room grows dim, and dissolves in the half light, and only the face
above me lives and is clear.

How various is a face; but an hour ago it was strange and now it is
touched with a tenderness that comes, not from it, but out of the night, the
world and the blood, all these things seem to shine in it together. The
objects in the room are touched by it and transformed, they become
isolated, and I feel almost awed at the sight of my clear skin when the light
of the lamp falls upon it and the cool, brown hand passes over it.

How different all this is from the conditions in the soldier's brothels, to
which we are allowed to go, and where we have to wait in long queues. I
wish I never thought of them; but desire turns my mind to them
involuntarily and I am afraid, for it might be impossible ever to be free of
them again.

But then I feel the lips of the little brunette and press myself against
them, my eyes close and I let it all fall from me, war and terror and
grossness, in order to awaken young and happy; I think of the picture of the
girl on the poster and, for a moment, believe that my life depends on
winning her. And if I press ever deeper into the arms that embrace me,
perhaps a miracle may happen....

. . . . . . . .

So, after a time we find ourselves reassembled again. Leer is in high
spirits. We pull on our boots and take our leave warmly. The night air cools
our hot bodies. The rustling poplars loom large in the darkness. The moon

floats in the heavens and in the waters of the canal. We do not run, we walk
beside one another with long strides.

"That was worth a ration-loaf," says Leer.

I cannot trust myself to speak, I am not in the least happy.

Then we hear footsteps and dodge behind a shrub.

The steps come nearer, close by us. We see a naked soldier, in boots,
just like ourselves; he has a package under his arm, and gallops onward. It
is Tjaden in full course. He has disappeared already.

We laugh. In the morning he will curse us.

Unobserved, we arrive again at our sacks of straw.

* *

I am called to the Orderly Room. The Company Commander gives me a
leave-pass and a travel-pass and wishes me a good journey. I look to see
how much leave I have got. Seventeen days—fourteen days leave and three
days for travelling. It is not enough and I ask whether I cannot have five
days for travelling. Bertinck points to my pass. There I see that I am not to
return to the front immediately. After my leave I have to report for a course
of training to a camp on the moors.

The others congratulate me. Kat gives me good advice, and tells me I
ought to try to get a base-job. "If you are smart, you'll hang on to it."

I would rather not have gone for another eight days; we are to stay here
that much longer and it is good here.

Naturally I have to stand the others drinks at the canteen. We are all a
little bit drunk. I become gloomy: I will be away for six weeks— That is
lucky of course, but what may happen before I get back? Shall I meet all
these fellows again? Already Haie has gone—who will the next be?

As we drink, I look at each of them in turn. Albert sits beside me and
smokes, he is silent, we have always been together;—opposite squats Kat,
with his drooping shoulders, his broad thumb, and calm voice—Müller with
the protruding teeth and the booming laugh; Tjaden with his mousey eyes;
—Leer who has grown a full beard and looks at least forty.

Over us hangs a dense cloud of smoke. Where would a soldier be
without tobacco. The canteen is his refuge, and beer is far more than a
drink, it is a token that a man can move his limbs and stretch in safety. We
do it ceremonially, we stretch our legs out in front of us and spit
deliberately, that is the only way. How it all rises up before a man when he
is going away the next morning!

At night we go again to the other side of the canal. I am almost afraid to
tell the little brunette that I am going away, and when I return we will
certainly be far away from here; we will never see one another again. But
she merely nods and takes no special notice. At first I am at a loss to
understand, then it suddenly dawns on me. Yes, Leer is right: if I were
going up to the front, then she would have again called me "pauvre garçon";
but merely going on leave—she does not want to hear about that, that is not
nearly so interesting. May she go to the devil with her chattering talk. A
man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.

Next morning, after I have been de-loused, I go to the rail head. Albert
and Kat come with me. At the halt we learn that it will be a couple of hours
yet before the train leaves. The other two have to go back to duty. We take
leave of one another.

"Good luck, Kat; good luck, Albert."

They go off and wave once or twice. Their figures dwindle. I know their
every step and movement; I would recognize them at any distance. Then
they disappear. I sit down on my pack and wait.

Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone.

* *

I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a soup-
kitchen; I squat on many a bench;—then at last the landscape becomes
gloomy, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western windows with
its villages, their thatched roofs like caps, pulled over the white-washed,
half-timbered houses, its corn-fields, gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the
slanting light, its orchards, its barns and old lime trees.

The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart
trembles. The train stamps and stamps onward, I stand at the window and
hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my youth.

Smooth meadows, fields, farm-yards; a solitary team moves against the
sky-line along the road that runs parallel to the horizon—a barrier, before
which peasants stand waiting, girls waving, children playing on the
embankment, roads, leading into the country, smooth roads without
artillery.

It is evening, and if the train did not rattle I should cry out. The plain
unfolds itself.

In the distance, the soft, blue silhouette of the mountain ranges begins to
appear. I recognize the characteristic outline of the Dolbenberg, a jagged
comb, springing up precipitously from the limit of the forests. Behind it
should lie the town.

But now the sun streams through the world, dissolving everything in its
golden-red light, the train swings round one curve and then another;—far
away, in a long line one behind the other, stand the poplars, unsubstantial,
swaying and dark, fashioned out of shadow, light, and desire.

The field swings round as the train encircles it, and the intervals
between the trees diminish; the trees become a block and for a moment I
see one only—then they reappear from behind the foremost tree and stand
out a long line against the sky until they are hidden by the first houses.

A street-crossing. I stand at the window, I cannot drag myself away. The
others put their baggage ready for getting out. I repeat to myself the name
of the Street that we cross over—Bremerstrasse—Bremerstrasse—

Below there are cyclists, lorries, men; it is a grey street and a grey
subway;—it embraces me as though it were my mother.

Then the train stops, and there is the station with noise and cries and
sentries. I pick up my pack and fasten the straps, I take my rifle in my hand
and stumble down the steps.

On the platform I look round; I know no one among all the people
hurrying to and fro. A red-cross sister offers me something to drink. I turn
away, she smiles at me too foolishly, so obsessed with her own importance:
"Just look, I am giving a soldier coffee!"—She calls me "Comrade," but I
will have none of it.

Outside in front of the station the stream roars alongside the street, it
rushes foaming from the sluices of the mill bridge. There stands the old,
square watch-tower, in front of it the great mottled lime tree and behind it
the evening.

Here we have often sat—how long ago it is—; we have passed over this
bridge and breathed the cool, acid smell of the stagnant water; we have
leaned over the still water on this side of the lock, where the green creepers
and weeds hang from the piles of the bridge;—and on hot days we rejoiced
in the spouting foam on the other side of the lock and told tales about our
school-teachers.

I pass over the bridge, I look right and left; the water is as full of weeds
as ever, and it still shoots over in gleaming arches; in the tower-building
laundresses still stand with bare arms as they used to over the clean linen,
and the heat from the ironing pours out through the open windows. Dogs
trot along the narrow street, before the doors of the houses people stand and
follow me with their gaze as I pass by, dirty and heavy laden.

In this confectioner's we used to eat ices, and there we learned to smoke
cigarettes. Walking down the street I know every shop, the colonial
warehouse, the chemist's, the tobacconist's. Then at last I stand before the
brown door with its worn latch and my hand grows heavy. I open the door
and a wonderful freshness comes out to meet me, my eyes are dim.

The stairs creak under my boots. Upstairs a door rattles, someone is
looking over the railing. It is the kitchen door that was opened, they are
cooking potato-cakes, the house reeks of it, and to-day of course is
Saturday; that will be my sister leaning over. For a moment I am shy and
lower my head, then I take off my helmet and look up. Yes, it is my eldest
sister.

"Paul," she cries, "Paul——"

I nod, my pack bumps against the banisters; my rifle is so heavy.

She pulls a door open and calls: "Mother, mother, Paul is here."

I can go no further—mother, mother, Paul is here.

I lean against the wall and grip my helmet and rifle. I hold them as tight
as I can, but I cannot take another step, the staircase fades before my eyes, I
support myself with the butt of my rifle against my feet and clench my teeth
fiercely, but I cannot speak a word, my sister's call has made me powerless,
I can do nothing, I struggle to make myself laugh, to speak, but no word
comes, and so I stand on the steps, miserable, helpless, paralysed, and
against my will the tears run down my cheeks.

My sister comes back and says: "Why, what is the matter?"

Then I pull myself together and stagger on to the landing. I lean my rifle
in a corner, I set my pack against the wall, place my helmet on it, and fling
down my equipment and baggage. Then I say fiercely: "Bring me a
handkerchief."

She gives me one from the cupboard and I dry my face. Above me on
the wall hangs the glass case with the coloured butterflies that once I
collected.

Now I hear my mother's voice. It comes from the bedroom.

"Is she in bed?" I ask my sister.

"She is ill—" she replies.

I go in to her, give her my hand and say as calmly as I can: "Here I am,
mother."

She lies still in the dim light. Then she asks anxiously:

"Are you wounded?" and I feel her searching glance.

"No, I have got leave."

My mother is very pale. I am afraid to make a light.

"Here I lie now," says she, "and cry instead of being glad."

"Are you sick, mother?" I ask.

"I am going to get up a little to-day," she says and turns to my sister,
who is continually running to the kitchen to watch that the food does not
burn: "And put out the jar of preserved whortleberries—you like that, don't
you?" she asks me.

"Yes, mother, I haven't had any for a long time."

"We might almost have known you were coming," laughs my sister,
"there is just your favourite dish, potato-cakes, and even whortleberries to
go with them too."

"And it is Saturday," I add.

"Sit here beside me," says my mother.

She looks at me. Her hands are white and sickly and frail compared
with mine. We say very little, and I am thankful that she asks nothing. What
ought I to say? Everything I could have wished for has happened. I have
come out of it safely and sit here beside her. And in the kitchen stands my
sister making the evening bread and singing.

"Dear boy," says my mother softly.

We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and
are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already
know. When my mother says to me "dear boy," it means much more than
when another uses it. I know well enough that the jar of whortleberries is
the only one they have had for months, and that she has kept it for me; and
the somewhat stale cakes that she gives me too. She has taken a favourable
opportunity of getting a few and has put them all by for me.

I sit by her bed, and through the window the chestnut trees in the beer
garden opposite glow in brown and gold. I breathe deeply and say over to
myself:—"You are at home, you are at home." But a sense of strangeness
will not leave me, I can find nothing of myself in all these things. There is
my mother, there is my sister, there my case of butterflies, and there the
mahogany piano—but I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil
between us.

I go and fetch my pack to the bedside and turn out the things I have
brought—a whole Edamer cheese, that Kat provided me with, two loaves of
army bread, three-quarters of a pound of butter, two tins of liver-sausage, a
pound of dripping and a little bag of rice.

"I suppose you can make some use of that——"

They nod.

"Is it pretty bad for food here?" I enquire.

"Yes, there's not much. Do you get enough out there?"

I smile and point to the things I have brought. "Not always quite so
much as that, of course, but we fare reasonably well."

Erna goes out to bring in the food. Suddenly my mother seizes hold of
my hand and asks falteringly: "Was it very bad out there, Paul?"

Mother, what should I answer to that! You would not understand, and
never realize it. And you never should realize it. Was it bad, you ask.—You,

Mother,—I shake my head and say: "No, mother, not so very. There are
always a lot of us together so it isn't so bad."

"Yes, but Heinrich Bredemeyer was here just lately and he said it was
terrible out there now, with the gas and all the rest of it."

It is my mother who says that. She says: "With the gas and all the rest of
it." She does not know what she is saying, she is merely anxious for me.
Should I tell her how we once found three enemy trenches with their
garrison all stiff as though stricken with apoplexy? Against the parapet, in
the dugouts, just where they were, the men stood and lay about, with blue
faces, dead.

"No, mother, that's only talk," I answer, "there's not very much in what
Bredemeyer says. You see for instance, I'm well and fit——"

Before my mother's tremulous anxiety I recover my composure. Now I
can walk about and talk and answer questions without fear of having
suddenly to lean against the wall because the world turns soft as rubber and
my veins become brimstone.

My mother wants to get up. So I go for a while to my sister in the
kitchen. "What is the matter with her?" I ask.

She shrugs her shoulders: "She has been in bed two months now, but we
did not want to write and tell you. Several doctors have been to see her. One
of them said it is probably cancer again."

* *

I go to the district commandant to report myself. Slowly I wander
through the streets. Occasionally someone speaks to me. I do not delay long
for I have little inclination to talk.

On my way back from the barracks a loud voice calls out to me. Still
lost in thought I turn round and find myself confronted by a Major. "Can't
you salute?" he blusters.

"Sorry, Major," I say in embarrassment, "I didn't notice you."

"Don't you know how to speak properly?" he roars.

I would like to hit him in the face, but control myself, for my leave
depends on it. I click my heels and say: "I did not see you, Herr Major."

"Then keep your eyes open," he snorts.

"What is your name?" I give it.

His fat red face is furious. "What regiment?"

I give him full particulars. Even yet he has not had enough. "Where are
they?"

But I have had more than enough and say: "Between Langemark and
Bixschoote."

"Eh?" he asks, a bit stupefied.

I explain to him that I arrived on leave only an hour or two since,
thinking that he would then trot along. But not at all. He gets even more
furious: "You think you can bring your front-line manners here, what? Well,
we don't stand that sort of thing. Thank God, we have discipline here!"

"Twenty paces backwards, double march!" he commands.

I am mad with rage. But I cannot say anything to him; he could put me
under arrest if he liked. So I double back, and then march up to him. Six
paces from him I spring to a stiff salute and maintain it until I am six paces
beyond him.

He calls me back again and affably gives me to understand that for once
he is pleased to put mercy before justice. I pretend to be duly grateful.
"Now, dismiss!" he says. I turn about smartly and march off.

That ruins the evening for me. I go back home and throw my uniform
into a corner; I ought to have done that before. Then I take out my civilian

clothes from the wardrobe and put them on.

I feel awkward. The suit is rather tight and short, I have grown in the
army. Collar and tie give me some trouble. In the end my sister ties the bow
for me. But how light the suit is, it feels as though I had nothing on but a
shirt and underpants.

I look at myself in the glass. It is a strange sight. A sunburnt, overgrown
candidate for confirmation gazes at me in astonishment.

My mother is pleased to see me wearing civilian clothes; it makes me
less strange to her. But my father would rather I kept my uniform on so that
he could take me to visit his acquaintances.

But I refuse.

* *

It is pleasant to sit quietly somewhere, in the beer-garden for example,
under the chestnuts by the skittle-alley. The leaves fall down on the table
and on the ground, only a few, the first. A glass of beer stands in front of
me, I've learned to drink in the army. The glass is half empty, but there are
still a few good swigs ahead of me, and besides I can always order a second
and a third if I wish to. There are no bugles and no bombardments, the
children of the house play in the skittle-alley, and the dog rests his head
against my knee. The sky is blue, between the leaves of the chestnuts rises
the green spire of St. Margaret's Church.

This is good, I like it. But I cannot get on with the people. My mother is
the only one who asks no questions. Not so my father. He wants me to tell
him about the front; he is curious in a way that I find stupid and distressing;
I no longer have any real contact with him. There is nothing he likes more
than just hearing about it. I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk
of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put
these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I
be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything
that happens out there were quite clear to us?

So I confine myself to telling him a few amusing things. But he wants to
know whether I have ever had a hand-to-hand fight. I say "No," and get up
and go out.

But that does not mend matters. After I have been startled a couple of
times in the street by the screaming of the tramcars, which resembles the
shriek of a shell coming straight for one, somebody taps me on the shoulder.
It is my German-master, and he fastens on me with the usual question:
"Well, how are things out there? Terrible, terrible, eh? Yes, it is dreadful,
but we must carry on. And after all, you do at least get decent food out
there, so I hear. You look well, Paul, and fit. Naturally it's worse here.
Naturally. The best for our soldiers every time, that goes without saying."

He drags me along to a table with a lot of others. They welcome me, a
head-master shakes hands with me and says: "So you come from the front?
What is the spirit like out there? Excellent, eh? excellent?"

I explain that no one would be sorry to be back home.

He laughs uproariously. "I can well believe it! But first you have to give
the Froggies a good hiding. Do you smoke? Here, try one. Waiter, bring a
beer as well for our young warrior."

Unfortunately I have accepted the cigar, so I have to remain. And they
are all so dripping with good will that it is impossible to object. All the
same I feel annoyed and smoke like a chimney as hard as I can. In order to
make at least some show of appreciation I toss off the beer in one gulp.
Immediately a second is ordered; people know how much they are indebted
to the soldiers. They argue about what we ought to annex. The head-master
with the steel watch-chain wants to have at least the whole of Belgium, the
coal-areas of France, and a slice of Russia. He produces reasons why we
must have them and is quite inflexible until at last the others give in to him.
Then he begins to expound just whereabouts in France the break-through
must come, and turns to me: "Now, shove ahead a bit out there with your
everlasting trench warfare—Smash through the johnnies and then there will
be peace."

I reply that in our opinion a break-through may not be possible. The
enemy may have too many reserves. Besides, the war may be rather
different from what people think.

He dismisses the idea loftily and informs me I know nothing about it.
"The details, yes," says he, "but this relates to the whole. And of that you
are not able to judge. You see only your little sector and so cannot have any
general survey. You do your duty, you risk your lives, that deserves the
highest honour—every man of you ought to have the Iron Cross—but first
of all the enemy line must be broken through in Flanders and then rolled up
from the top."

He blows his nose and wipes his beard. "Completely rolled up they
must be, from the top to the bottom. And then to Paris."

I would like to know just how he pictures it to himself, and pour the
third glass of beer into me. Immediately he orders another.

But I break away. He stuffs a few more cigars into my pocket and sends
me off with a friendly slap. "All of the best! I hope we will soon hear
something worth while from you."

* *

I imagined leave would be different from this. Indeed, it was different a
year ago. It is I of course that have changed in the interval. There lies a gulf
between that time and to-day. At that time I still knew nothing about the
war, we had been only in quiet sectors. But now I see that I have been
crushed without knowing it. I find I do not belong here any more, it is a
foreign world. Some of these people ask questions, some ask no questions,
but one can see that they are quite confident they know all about it; they
often say so with their air of comprehension, so there is no point in
discussing it. They make up a picture of it for themselves.

I prefer to be alone, so that no one troubles me. For they all come back
to the same thing, how badly it goes and how well it goes; one thinks it is
this way, another that; and yet they are always absorbed in the things that go
to make up their own existence. Formerly I lived in just the same way
myself, but now I feel no contact here any longer.

They talk to me too much. They have worries, aims, desires, that I
cannot comprehend. I often sit with one of them in the little beer-garden and
try to explain to him that this is really the only thing: just to sit quietly, like
this. They understand of course, they agree, they may even feel it so too, but
only with words, only with words, yes, that is it—they feel it, but always
with only half of themselves, the rest of their being is taken up with other
things, they are so divided in themselves that none feels it with his whole
essence; I cannot even say myself exactly what I mean.

When I see them here, in their rooms, in their offices, about their
occupations, I feel an irresistible attraction in it, I would like to be here too
and forget the war; but also it repels me, it is so narrow, how can that fill a
man's life, he ought to smash it to bits; how can they do it, while out at the
front the splinters are whining over the shell-holes and the star-shells go up,
the wounded are carried back on water-proof sheets and comrades crouch in
the trenches.—They are different men here, men I cannot properly
understand, whom I envy and despise. I must think of Kat and Albert and
Müller and Tjaden, what will they be doing? No doubt they are sitting in the
canteen, or perhaps swimming—soon they will have to go up to the front-
line again.

* *

In my room behind the table stands a brown leather sofa. I sit down on
it.

On the walls are pasted countless pictures that I once used to cut out of
the newspapers. In between are drawings and postcards that have come my
way. In the corner is a small iron stove. Against the wall opposite stand the
book-shelves with my books.

I used to live in this room before I was a soldier. The books I bought
gradually with the money I earned by coaching. Many of them are second-
hand, all the classics for example, one volume in blue cloth boards cost one
mark twenty pfennig. I bought them complete because I was
thoroughgoing, I did not trust the editors of selections, even though they
may have chosen all the best. So I purchased only "collected works." I read
most of them with laudable zeal, but few of them really appealed to me. I
preferred the other books, the moderns, which were of course much dearer.
A few I came by not quite honestly, I borrowed and did not return them
because I did not want to part with them.

One shelf is filled with school books. They are not so well cared for,
they are badly thumbed, and pages have been torn out for certain purposes.
Then below are periodicals, papers, and letters all jammed in together with
drawings and rough sketches.

I want to think myself back into that time. It is still in the room, I feel it
at once, the walls have preserved it. My hands rest on the arms of the sofa;
now I make myself at home and draw up my legs so that I sit comfortably
in the corner, in the arms of the sofa. The little window is open, through it I
see the familiar picture of the street with the rising spire of the church at the
end. There are a couple of flowers on the table. Pen-holders, a shell as a
paper-weight, the ink-well—here nothing is changed.

It will be like this too, if I am lucky, when the war is over and I come
back here for good. I will sit here just like this and look at my room and
wait.

I feel excited; but I do not want to be, for that is not right. I want that
quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I
used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose
from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy,
dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the
impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring
back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait.

It occurs to me that I must go and see Kemmerich's mother;—I might
visit Mittelstaedt too, he should be at the barracks. I look out of the

window;—beyond the sober picture of the street appears a range of hills,
distant and light; it changes to a clear day in autumn, and I sit by the fire
with Kat and Albert and eat potatoes baked in their skins.

But I do not want to think of that, I sweep it away. The room shall
speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I
want to hearken and know when I go back to the front that the war will sink
down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will
then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but
an outward power over us.

The backs of the books stand in rows. I know them all still, I remember
arranging them in order. I implore them with my eyes: Speak to me—take
me up—take me, Life of my Youth—you who are care-free, beautiful—
receive me again—

I wait, I wait.

Images float through my mind, but they do not grip me, they are mere
shadows and memories.

Nothing—nothing—

My disquietude grows.

A terrible feeling of foreignness suddenly rises up in me. I cannot find
my way back, I am shut out though I entreat earnestly and put forth all my
strength.

Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there
and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too
much, because I do not know what might happen then. I am a soldier, I
must cling to that.

Wearily I stand up and look out of the window. Then I take one of the
books, intending to read, and turn over the leaves. But I put it away and
take out another. There are passages in it that have been marked. I look, turn

over the pages, take up fresh books. Already they are piled up beside me.
Speedily more join the heap, papers, magazines, letters.

I stand there dumb. As before a judge.

Dejected.

Words, Words, Words—they do not reach me.

Slowly I place the books back in the shelves.

Nevermore.

Quietly, I go out of the room.

* *

Still I do not give up hope. I do not, indeed, go to my room any more,
but comfort myself with the thought that a few days are not enough to judge
by. Afterwards—later on—there is plenty of time for that.

So I go over to see Mittelstaedt in the barracks, and we sit in his room,
there is an atmosphere about it that I do not like but with which I am quite
familiar.

Mittelstaedt has some news ready for me that electrifies me on the spot.
He tells me Kantorek has been called up as a territorial.

"Just think of it," says he, and takes out a couple of good cigars, "I come
back here from the hospital and bump right into him. He stretches out his
paw to me and bleats: 'Hullo Mittelstaedt, how are you?'—I look at him and
say: 'Territorial Kantorek, business is business and schnapps is schnapps,
you ought to know that well enough yourself. Stand to attention when you
speak to a superior officer.' You should have seen his face! A cross between
a dud and a pickled cucumber. He tried once again to chum up. So I
snubbed him a bit harder. Then he brought up his biggest guns and asked
confidentially: 'Would you like me to use my influence so that you can take
an emergency-exam.?' He was trying to remind me of those things, you
know. Then I got mad and I reminded him of something instead. 'Territorial

Kantorek, two years ago you preached us into enlisting; and among us there
was one, Joseph Behm, who didn't want to enlist. He was killed three
months before he would have been called up in the ordinary way. If it had
not been for you he would have lived just that much longer. And now:
Dismiss. You will hear from me later.' It was easy to get put in charge of his
company. First thing I did was to take him to the stores and fit him out with
a suitable equipment. You will see in a minute."

We go out to the parade ground. The company has fallen in. Mittelstaedt
stands them at ease and inspects.

Then I see Kantorek and am scarcely able to stifle my laughter. He is
wearing a faded blue tunic. On the back and in the sleeves there are big
dark patches. The overcoat must have belonged to a giant. The black, worn
breeches are just as much too short; they reach barely halfway down his
calf. The boots, tough old clod-hoppers, with turned-up toes and laces at the
side, are much too big for him. But as a compensation the cap is too small, a
terribly dirty, mean little pill-box. The whole rig-out is just pitiful.

Mittelstaedt stops in front of him: "Territorial Kantorek, do you call
those buttons polished? You seem as though you can never learn.
Inadequate, Kantorek, quite inadequate——"

It makes me bubble with glee. In school Kantorek used to chasten
Mittelstaedt with exactly the same expression—"Inadequate, Mittelstaedt,
quite inadequate."

Mittelstaedt continues to upbraid him: "Look at Boettcher now, there's a
model for you to learn from."

I can hardly believe my eyes. Boettcher is there too, Boettcher, our
school porter. And he is a model! Kantorek shoots a glance at me as if he
would like to eat me. But I grin at him innocently, as though I do not
recognize him any more.

Nothing could look more ludicrous than his forage-cap and his uniform.
And this is the object before whom we used to stand in anguish, as he sat up
there enthroned at his desk, spearing at us with his pencil for our mistakes

in those irregular French verbs with which afterwards we made so little
headway in France. That is barely two years ago—and now here stands
Territorial Kantorek, the spell quite broken, with bent knees, arms like
pothooks, unpolished buttons and that ludicrous rig-out—an impossible
soldier. I cannot reconcile this with the menacing figure at the
schoolmaster's desk. I wonder what I, the old soldier, would do if this skin
full of woe ever dared to say to me again: "Bäumer, give the imperfect of
'aller.'"

Then Mittelstaedt makes them practice skirmishing, and as a favour
appoints Kantorek squad leader.

Now in skirmishing the squad leader has always to keep twenty paces in
front of his squad; if the order comes "On the march, about turn," the line of
skirmishers simply turns about, but the squad leader, who now finds himself
suddenly twenty paces in rear of the line, has to rush up at the double and
take his position again twenty paces in front of the squad. That makes
altogether forty paces double-march. But no sooner has he arrived than the
order "On the march, about turn," comes again and he once more has to race
at top speed another forty paces to the other side. In this way the squad has
made merely the turn-about and a couple of paces while the squad-leader
dashes backwards and forwards like a fart on a curtain pole. That is one of
Himmelstoss' well-worn recipes.

Kantorek can hardly expect anything else from Mittelstaedt, for he once
messed up the latter's chance of promotion, and Mittelstaedt would be a big
fool not to make the best of such a good opportunity as this, before he goes
back to the front again. A man might well die easier after the army has
given him just one such stroke of luck.

In the meantime Kantorek is dashing up and down like a wild-boar.
After a while Mittelstaedt stops the skirmish and begins the very important
exercise of creeping.

On hands and knees, carrying his gun in regulation fashion, Kantorek
shoves his absurd figure over the sand immediately in front of us. He is
breathing hard, and his panting is music.

Mittelstaedt encourages Kantorek the Territorial with quotations from
Kantorek the schoolmaster. "Territorial Kantorek, we have the good fortune
to live in a great age, we must all humble ourselves and for once put aside
bitterness."

Kantorek sweats and spits out a dirty piece of wood that has lodged in
his teeth.

Mittelstaedt stoops down and says reproachfully: "And in the trifles
never lose sight of the great adventure, Territorial Kantorek!"

It amazes me that Kantorek does not explode with a bang, especially
when, during physical exercises, Mittelstaedt copies him to perfection,
seizing him by the seat of his trousers as he is climbing along the horizontal
bar, so that he can just raise his chin above the beam, and then starts to give
him good advice. That is exactly what Kantorek used to do to him at school.

The extra fatigues are next detailed off. "Kantorek and Boettcher, bread
fatigue! Take the handcart with you."

In a couple of minutes the two set off together pushing the barrow.
Kantorek in a fury walks with his head down. But the porter is delighted to
have scored light duty.

The bakehouse is away at the other end of the town, and the two must
go there and back through the whole length of it.

"They've done that a couple of times already," grins Mittelstaedt. "There
are still a few people waiting to see them."

"Excellent," I say, "but hasn't he reported you yet?"

"He did try. Our C.O. laughed like the deuce when he heard the story.
He hasn't any time for schoolmasters. Besides, I'm sweet with his daughter."

"He'll mess up the examination for you."

"I don't care," says Mittelstaedt calmly. "Besides, his complaint came to
nothing because I could show that he had had hardly anything but light

duty."

"Couldn't you polish him up a bit?" I ask.

"He's too stupid, I couldn't be bothered," answers Mittelstaedt
contemptuously.

* *

What is leave?—A pause that only makes everything after it so much
worse. Already the sense of parting begins to intrude itself. My mother
watches me silently,—I know she counts the days;—every morning she is
sad. It is one day less. She has put away my pack, she does not want to be
reminded by it.

The hours pass quickly if a man broods. I pull myself together, and go
with my sister to the butcher's to get a pound of bones. That is a great
luxury and people line up early in the morning and stand waiting. Many of
them faint.

We have no luck. After waiting by turns for three hours the queue
disperses. The bones have not lasted out.

It is a good thing I get my rations. I bring them to my mother and in that
way we all get something decent to eat.

The days grow ever more strained and my mother's eyes more
sorrowful. Four days left now. I must go and see Kemmerich's mother.

* *

I cannot write that down. This quaking, sobbing woman who shakes me
and cries out on me: "Why are you living then, when he is dead?"—who
drowns me in tears and calls out: "What are you there for at all, child, when
you——"—who drops into a chair and wails: "Did you see him? Did you
see him then? How did he die?"

I tell her he was shot through the heart and died instantaneously. She
looks at me, she doubts me: "You lie. I know better. I have felt how terribly

he died. I have heard his voice at night, I have felt his anguish—tell the
truth, I want to know it, I must know it."

"No," I say, "I was beside him. He died at once."

She pleads with me gently: "Tell me. You must tell me. I know you want
to comfort me, but don't you see, you torment me far more than if you told
me the truth? I cannot bear the uncertainty. Tell me how it was and even
though it will be terrible, it will be far better than what I have to think if you
don't."

I will never tell her, she can make mincemeat out of me first. I console
her, but she strikes me as rather stupid all the same. Why doesn't she stop
worrying? Kemmerich will stay dead whether she knows about it or not.
When a man has seen so many dead he cannot understand any longer why
there should be so much anguish over a single individual. So I say rather
impatiently: "He died immediately. He felt absolutely nothing at all. His
face was quite calm."

She is silent. Then she says slowly: "Will you swear it?"

"Yes."

"By everything that is sacred to you?"

Good God, what is there that is sacred to me?—such things change
pretty quickly with us.

"Yes, he died at once."

"Are you willing never to come back yourself, if it isn't true?"

"May I never come back if he wasn't killed instantaneously."

I would swear to anything. But she seems to believe me. She moans and
weeps steadily. I have to tell how it happened so I invent a story and I
almost believe it myself.

As I leave she kisses me and gives me a picture of him. In his recruit's
uniform he leans on a round rustic table with legs made of birch branches.
Behind him a wood is painted on a curtain, and on the table stands a mug of
beer.

* *

It is the last evening at home. Everyone is silent. I go to bed early, I
seize the pillow, press it against myself and bury my head in it. Who knows
if I will ever lie in a feather bed again?

Late in the night my mother comes into my room. She thinks I am
asleep, and I pretend to be so. To talk, to stay awake with one another, it is
too hard.

She sits long into the night although she is in pain and often writhes. At
last I can bear it no longer, and pretend I have just wakened up.

"Go and sleep, mother, you will catch cold here."

"I can sleep enough later," she says.

I sit up. "I don't go straight back to the front, mother. I have to do four
weeks at the training camp. I may come over from there one Sunday,
perhaps."

She is silent. Then she asks gently: "Are you very much afraid?"

"No, mother."

"I would like to tell you to be on your guard against the women out in
France. They are no good."

Ah! Mother, Mother! You still think I am a child—why can I not put my
head in your lap and weep? Why have I always to be strong and self-
controlled? I would like to weep and be comforted, too, indeed I am little
more than a child; in the wardrobe still hang my short, boy's trousers—it is
such a little time ago, why is it over?

"Where we are there aren't any women, mother," I say as calmly as I
can.

"And be very careful at the front, Paul."

Ah, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with
you. What poor wretches we are!

"Yes, mother, I will."

"I will pray for you every day, Paul."

Ah! Mother, Mother! Let us rise up and go out, back through the years,
where the burden of all this misery lies on us no more, back to you and me
alone, Mother!

"Perhaps you can get a job that is not so dangerous."

"Yes, mother, perhaps I can get into the cook-house, that can easily be
done."

"You do it then, and if the others say anything——"

"That won't worry me, mother——"

She sighs. Her face is a white gleam in the darkness.

"Now you must go to sleep, mother."

She does not reply. I get up and wrap my cover round her shoulders.

She supports herself on my arm, she is in pain. And so I take her to her
room. I stay with her a little while.

"And you must get well again, mother, before I come back."

"Yes, yes, my child."

"You ought not to send your things to me, mother. We have plenty to eat
out there. You can make much better use of them here."

How destitute she lies there in her bed, she, that loves me more than all
the world. As I am about to leave, she says hastily: "I have two pairs of
under-pants for you. They are all wool. They will keep you warm. You must
not forget to put them in your pack."

Ah! Mother! I know what these underpants have cost you in waiting,
and walking, and begging! Ah! Mother, Mother! how can it be that I must
part from you? Who else is there that has any claim on me but you. Here I
sit and there you are lying, and we have so much to say, that we could never
say it.

"Good-night, mother."

"Good-night, my child."

The room is dark. I hear my mother's breathing, and the ticking of the
clock. Outside the window the wind blows and the chestnut trees rustle.

On the landing I stumble over my pack which lies there already made
up, because I have to leave early in the morning.

I bite into my pillow. I grasp the iron rods of my bed with my fists. I
ought never to have come here. Out there I was indifferent and often
hopeless;—I will never be able to be so again. I was a soldier, and now I am
nothing but an agony for myself, for my mother, for everything that is so
comfortless and without end.

I ought never to have come on leave.

CHAPTER VIII

I already know the camp on the moors. It was here that Himmelstoss
gave Tjaden his education. But now I know hardly anyone here; as ever, all
is altered. There are only a few people that I have occasionally met before.

I go through the routine mechanically. In the evenings I generally go to
the Soldiers' Home, where the newspapers are laid out, but which I do not
read; still, there is a piano there that I am glad enough to play on. Two girls
are in attendance, one of them is young.

The camp is surrounded with high barbed-wire fences. If we come back
late from the Soldiers' Home we have to show passes. But those who are on
good terms with the guard can get through, of course.

Between the junipers and the birch trees on the moor we practice
company-drill each day. It is bearable if one expects nothing better. We
advance at a run, fling ourselves down, and our panting breath moves the
stalks of the grasses and the flowers of the heather to and fro. Looked at so
closely one sees the fine sand is composed of millions of the tiniest pebbles
as clear as if they had been made in a laboratory. It is strangely inviting to
dig one's hands into it.

But most beautiful are the woods with their line of birch trees. Their
colour changes with every minute. Now the stems gleam purest white, and
between them airy and silken, hangs the pastel-green of the leaves; the next
moment all changes to an opalescent blue, as the shivering breezes pass
down from the heights and touch the green lightly away; and again in one
place it deepens almost to black as a cloud passes over the sun. And this
shadow moves like a ghost through the dim trunks and passes far out over
the moor to the sky—then the birches stand out again like gay banners on
white poles, with their red and gold patches of autumn-tinted leaves.

I often become so lost in the play of soft light and transparent shadow,
that I almost fail to hear the commands. It is when one is alone that one
begins to observe Nature and to love her. And here I have not much
companionship, and do not even desire it. We are too little acquainted with
one another to do more than joke a bit and play poker or nap in the
evenings.

Alongside our camp is the big Russian prison camp. It is separated from
us by a wire fence, but in spite of this the prisoners come across to us. They
seem nervous and fearful, though most of them are big fellows with beards
—they look like meek, scolded, St. Bernard dogs.

They slink about our camp and pick over the garbage tins. One can
imagine what they find there. With us food is pretty scarce and none too
good at that—turnips cut into six pieces and boiled in water, and unwashed
carrot tops;—mouldy potatoes are tit-bits, and the chief luxury is a thin rice
soup in which float little bits of beef-sinew, but these are cut up so small
that they take a lot of finding.

Everything gets eaten, notwithstanding, and if ever anyone is so well off
as not to want all his share, there are a dozen others standing by ready to
relieve him of it. Only the dregs that the ladle cannot reach are tipped out
and thrown into the garbage tins. Along with that sometimes go a few turnip
peelings, mouldy bread crusts and all kinds of muck.

This thin, miserable, dirty garbage is the objective of the prisoners.
They pick it out of the stinking tins greedily and go off with it under their
blouses.

It is strange to see these enemies of ours so close up. They have faces
that make one think—honest peasant faces, broad foreheads, broad noses,
broad mouths, broad hands, and thick hair.

They ought to be put to threshing, reaping, and apple picking. They look
just as kindly as our own peasants in Friesland.

It is distressing to watch their movements, to see them begging for
something to eat. They are all rather feeble, for they only get enough
nourishment to keep them from starving. Ourselves we have not had
sufficient to eat for long enough. They have dysentery; furtively many of
them display the blood-stained tails of their shirts. Their backs, their necks
are bent, their knees sag, their heads droop as they stretch out their hands
and beg in the few words of German that they know—beg with those soft,
deep, musical voices, that are like warm stoves and cosy rooms at home.

Some men there are who give them a kick, so that they fall over;—but
those are not many. The majority do nothing to them, just ignore them.
Occasionally, when they are too grovelling, it makes a man mad and then he
kicks them. If only they would not look at one so—What great misery can
be in two such small spots, no bigger than a man's thumb—in their eyes!

They come over to the camp in the evenings and trade. They exchange
whatever they possess for bread. Often they have fair success, because they
have very good boots and ours are bad. The leather of their knee boots is
wonderfully soft, like suede. The peasants among us who get tit bits sent
from home can afford to trade. The price of a pair of boots is about two or
three loaves of army bread, or a loaf of bread and a small, tough ham
sausage.

But most of the Russians have long since parted with whatever things
they had. Now they wear only the most pitiful clothing, and try to exchange
little carvings and objects that they have made out of shell fragments and
copper driving bands. Of course, they don't get much for such things,
though they may have taken immense pains with them—they go for a slice
or two of bread. Our peasants are hard and cunning when they bargain.
They hold the piece of bread or sausage right under the nose of the Russian
till he grows pale with greed and his eyes bulge and then he will give
anything for it. The peasants wrap up their booty with the utmost solemnity,
and then get out their big pocket knives, and slowly and deliberately cut off
a slice of bread for themselves from their supply and with every mouthful
take a piece of the good, tough sausage and so reward themselves with a
good feed. It is distressing to watch them take their afternoon meal thus;
one would like to crack them over their thick pates. They rarely give
anything away. How little we understand one another!

* *

I am often on guard over the Russians. In the darkness one sees their
forms move like sick storks, like great birds. They come close up to the
wire fence and lean their faces against it; their fingers hook round the mesh.
Often many stand side by side, and breathe the wind that comes down from
the moors and the forest.

They rarely speak and then only a few words. They are more human and
more brotherly towards one another, it seems to me, than we are. But
perhaps that is merely because they feel themselves to be more unfortunate
than us. Anyway the war is over so far as they are concerned. But to wait
for dysentery is not much of a life either.

The Territorials who are in charge of them say that they were much
more lively at first. They used to have intrigues among themselves, as
always happens, and it would often come to blows and knives. But now
they are quite apathetic, and listless; most of them do not masturbate any
more, they are so feeble, though occasionally it is so bad that they do it
barracks fashion.

They stand at the wire fence; sometimes one goes away and then
another at once takes his place in the line. Most of them are silent;
occasionally one begs a cigarette butt.

I see their dark forms, their beards move in the wind. I know nothing of
them except that they are prisoners, and that is exactly what troubles me.
Their life is obscure and guiltless;—if I could know more of them, what
their names are, how they live, what they are waiting for, what are their
burdens, then my emotion would have an object and might become
sympathy. But as it is I perceive behind them only the suffering of the
creature, the awful melancholy of life and the pitilessness of men.

A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word
of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a
document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for
years together that very crime on which formerly the world's condemnation
and severest penalty fell, becomes our highest aim. But who can draw such
a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their childlike faces and
apostles' beards. Any non-commissioned officer is more of an enemy to a
recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil than they are to us. And yet we would
shoot at them again and they at us if they were free.

I am frightened: I dare think this way no more. This way lies the abyss.
It is not now the time; but I will not lose these thoughts, I will keep them,
shut them away until the war is ended. My heart beats fast: this is the aim,

the great, the sole aim, that I have thought of in the trenches; that I have
looked for as the only possibility of existence after this annihilation of all
human feeling; this is a task that will make life afterward worthy of these
hideous years.

I take out my cigarettes, break each one in half and give them to the
Russians. They bow to me and then they light the cigarettes. Now red points
glow in every face. They comfort me; it looks as though there were little
windows in dark village cottages saying that behind them are rooms full of
peace.

* *

The days go by. On a foggy morning another of the Russians is buried;
almost every day one of them dies. I am on guard during the burial. The
prisoners sing a chorale, they sing in parts, and it sounds almost as if there
were no voices, but an organ far away on the moor.

The burial is quickly over.

In the evening they stand again at the wire fence and the wind comes
down to them from the beech woods. The stars are cold.

I now know a few of those who speak a little German. There is a
musician amongst them, he says he used to be a violinist in Berlin. When he
hears that I can play the piano he fetches his violin and plays. The others sit
down and lean their backs against the fence. He stands up and plays,
sometimes he has that absent expression which violinists get when they
close their eyes; or again he sways the instrument to the rhythm and smiles
across to me.

He plays mostly folk songs and the others hum with him. They are like
a country of dark hills that sing far down under the ground. The sound of
the violin stands like a slender girl above it and is clear and alone. The
voices cease and the violin continues alone. In the night it is so thin it
sounds frozen; one must stand close up; it would be much better in a room;
—out here it makes a man grow sad.

* *

Because I have already had a long leave I get none on Sundays. So the
last Sunday before I go back to the front my father and eldest sister come
over to see me. All day we sit in the Soldiers' Home. Where else could we
go, we don't want to stay in the camp. About midday we go for a walk on
the moors.

The hours are a torture; we do not know what to talk about, so we speak
of my mother's illness. It is now definitely cancer, she is already in the
hospital and will be operated on shortly. The doctors hope she will recover,
but we have never heard of cancer being cured.

"Where is she then?" I ask.

"In the Luisa Hospital," says my father.

"In which class?"

"Third. We must wait till we know what the operation costs. She wanted
to be in the third herself. She said that then she would have some company.
And besides it is cheaper."

"So she is lying there with all those people. If only she could sleep
properly."

My father nods. His face is broken and full of furrows. My mother has
always been sickly; and though she has only gone to the hospital when she
has been compelled to, it has cost a great deal of money, and my father's life
has been practically given up to it.

"If only I knew how much the operation costs," says he.

"Have you not asked?"

"Not directly, I cannot do that—the surgeon might take it amiss and that
would not do, he must operate on mother."

Yes, I think bitterly, that's how it is with us, and with all poor people.
They don't dare to ask the price, but worry themselves dreadfully
beforehand about it; but the others, for whom it is not important, they settle
the price first as a matter of course. And the doctor does not take it amiss
from them.

"And the dressings afterwards are so expensive," says my father.

"Doesn't the Invalid's Fund pay anything toward it, then?" I ask.

"Mother has been ill too long."

"Have you any money at all?"

He shakes his head: "No, but I can do some overtime."

I know. He will stand at his desk folding and pasting and cutting until
twelve o'clock at night. At eight o'clock in the evening he will eat some of
the miserable rubbish they get in exchange for their food tickets, then he
will take a powder for his headache and work on.

In order to cheer him up a bit I tell him a few stories, soldiers' jokes, and
the like, about generals and sergeant-majors.

Afterwards I accompany them both to the railway station. They give me
a pot of jam and a bag of potato-cakes that my mother has made for me.

Then they go off and I return to the camp.

In the evening I spread the jam on the cakes and eat some. But I have no
taste for them. So I go out to give them to the Russians. Then it occurs to
me that my mother cooked them herself and that she was probably in pain
as she stood before the hot stove. I put the bag back in my pack and take
only two cakes to the Russians.

CHAPTER IX

We travel for several days. The first aeroplanes appear in the sky. We
roll on past transport lines. Guns, guns. The light railway picks us up. I
search for my regiment. No one knows exactly where it lies. Somewhere or
other I put up for the night, somewhere or other I receive provisions and a
few vague instructions. And so with my pack and my rifle I set out again on
the way.

By the time I come up they are no longer in that devastated place. I hear
we have become one of the flying divisions that are pushed in wherever it is
hottest. That does not sound cheerful to me. They tell me of heavy losses
that we have been having. I inquire after Kat and Albert. No one knows
anything of them.

I search farther and wander about here and there; it is a wonderful
feeling. One night and then another I camp out like a Red Indian. Then at
last I get some definite information, and by the afternoon I am able to report
to the Orderly Room.

The sergeant-major detains me there. The company comes back in two
days' time. There is no object in sending me up now.

"What was it like on leave?" he asks, "pretty good, eh?"

"In parts," I say.

"Yes," he sighs, "yes, if a man didn't have to come away again. The
second half is always rather messed up by that."

I loaf around until the company comes back in the early morning, grey,
dirty, soured, and gloomy. Then I jump up, push in amongst them, my eyes
searching. There is Tjaden, there is Müller blowing his nose, and there are
Kat and Kropp. We arrange our sacks of straw side by side. I have an
uneasy conscience when I look at them, and yet without any good reason.
Before we turn in I bring out the rest of the potato-cakes and jam so that
they can have some too.

The two outer cakes are mouldy, still it is possible to eat them. I keep
those for myself and give the fresh ones to Kat and Kropp.

Kat chews and says: "These are from your mother?"

I nod.

"Good," says he, "I can tell by the taste."

I could almost weep. I can hardly control myself any longer. But it will
soon be all right again back here with Kat and Albert. This is where I
belong.

"You've been lucky," whispers Kropp to me before we drop off to sleep,
"they say we are going to Russia."

To Russia. It's not much of a war over there.

In the distance the front thunders. The walls of the hut rattle.

* *

There's a great deal of polishing being done. We are inspected at every
turn. Everything that is torn is exchanged for new. I score a spotless new
tunic out of it and Kat, of course, an entire outfit. A rumour is going round
that there may be peace, but the other story is more likely—that we are
bound for Russia. Still, what do we need new things for in Russia? At last it
leaks out—the Kaiser is coming to review us. Hence all the inspections.

For eight whole days one would suppose we were in a base-camp, there
is so much drill and fuss. Everyone is peevish and touchy, we do not take
kindly to all this polishing, much less to parades. Such things exasperate a
soldier more than the front-line.

At last the moment arrives. We stand up stiff and the Kaiser appears. We
are curious to see what he looks like. He stalks along the line, and I am
really rather disappointed; judging from his pictures I imagined him to be
bigger and more powerfully built, and above all to have a thundering voice.

He distributes Iron Crosses and speaks to this man and to that. Then we
march off.

Afterwards we discuss it. Tjaden says with astonishment:

"So that is the All-Highest! And everyone, bar nobody, has to stand up
stiff in front of him!" He meditates: "Hindenburg too, he has to stand up
stiff to him, eh?"

"Sure," says Kat.

Tjaden hasn't finished yet. He thinks for a while and then asks: "And
would a king have to stand up stiff to an emperor?"

None of us is quite sure about it, but we don't suppose so. They are both
so exalted that standing strictly to attention is probably not insisted on.

"What rot you do hatch out," says Kat. "The main point is that you have
to stand stiff yourself."

But Tjaden is quite fascinated. His otherwise prosy fancy is blowing
bubbles. "But look," he announces, "I simply can't believe that an emperor
has to go to the latrine the same as I have."

"You can bet your boots on it."

"Four and a half-wit make seven," says Kat. "You've got a maggot in
your brain, Tjaden, just you run along to the latrine quick, and get your
head clear, so that you don't talk like a two-year-old."

Tjaden disappears.

"But what I would like to know," says Albert, "is whether there would
not have been a war if the Kaiser had said No."

"I'm sure of this much," I interject, "he was against it from the first."

"Well, if not him alone, then perhaps if twenty or thirty people in the
world had said No."

"That's probable," I agree, "but they damned well said Yes."

"It's queer, when one thinks about it," goes on Kropp, "we are here to
protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect their
fatherland. Now, who's in the right?"

"Perhaps both," say I, without believing it.

"Yes, well now," pursues Albert, and I see that he means to drive me
into a corner, "but our professors and parsons and newspapers say that we
are the only ones that are right, and let's hope so;—but the French
professors and parsons and newspapers say that the right is on their side,
now what about that?"

"That I don't know," I say, "but whichever way it is there's war all the
same and every month more countries coming in."

Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the
conversation, wondering just how a war gets started.

"Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with a
slight air of superiority.

Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. "A country? I don't follow. A
mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a
wood, or a field of wheat."

"Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?" growls
Kropp, "I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other——"

"Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, "I don't feel
myself offended."

"Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, "it doesn't apply to tramps
like you."

"Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all
laugh.

"Ach, man! he means the people as a whole, the State——" exclaims
Müller.

"State, State"—Tjaden snaps his fingers contemptuously, "Gendarmes,
police, taxes, that's your State;—if that's what you are talking about, no
thank you."

"That's right," says Kat, "you've said something for once, Tjaden. State
and home-country, there's a big difference."

"But they go together," insists Kropp, "without the State there wouldn't
be any home-country."

"True, but just you consider, almost all of us are simple folk. And in
France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor clerks.
Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to
attack us? No, it is merely the rulers. I had never seen a Frenchman before I
came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of Frenchmen as
regards us. They weren't asked about it any more than we were."

"Then what exactly is the war for?" asks Tjaden.

Kat shrugs his shoulders. "There must be some people to whom the war
is useful."

"Well, I'm not one of them," grins Tjaden.

"Not you, nor anybody else here."

"Who are they then?" persists Tjaden. "It isn't any use to the Kaiser
either. He has everything he can want already."

"I'm not so sure about that," contradicts Kat, "he has not had a war up
till now. And every full-grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise
he wouldn't become famous. You look in your school books."

"And generals too," adds Detering, "they become famous through war."

"Even more famous than emperors," adds Kat.

"There are other people back behind there who profit by the war, that's
certain," growls Detering.

"I think it is more a kind of fever," says Albert. "No one in particular
wants it, and then all at once there it is. We didn't want the war, the others
say the same thing—and yet half the world is in it all the same."

"But there are more lies told by the other side than by us," say I; "just
think of those pamphlets the prisoners have on them, where it says that we
eat Belgian children. The fellows who write that ought to go and hang
themselves. They are the real culprits."

Müller gets up. "Anyway, it is better that the war is here instead of in
Germany. Just you take a look at the shell-holes."

"True," assents Tjaden, "but no war at all would be better still."

He is quite proud of himself because he has for once scored over us
volunteers. And his opinion is quite typical here, one meets it time and
again, and there is nothing with which one can properly counter it, because
that is the limit of their comprehension of the factors involved. The national
feeling of the tommy resolves itself into this—here he is. But that is the end
of it; everything else from joining up onwards he criticizes from a practical
point of view.

Albert lies down on the grass and growls angrily: "The best thing is not
to talk about the rotten business."

"It won't make any difference, that's sure," agrees Kat.

As for the windfall, we have to return almost all the new things and take
back our old rags again. The good ones were merely for the inspection.

* *

Instead of going to Russia, we go up the line again. On the way we pass
through a devastated wood with the tree trunks shattered and the ground
ploughed up.

At several places there are tremendous craters. "Great guns, something's
hit that," I say to Kat.

"Trench mortars," he replies, and then points up at one of the trees.

In the branches dead men are hanging. A naked soldier is squatting in
the fork of a tree, he still has his helmet on, otherwise he is entirely unclad.
There is only half of him sitting up there, the top half, the legs are missing.

"What can that mean?" I ask.

"He's been blown out of his clothes," mutters Tjaden.

"It's funny," says Kat, "we have seen that a couple of times now. If a
mortar gets you it blows you almost clean out of your clothes. It's the
concussion that does it."

I search around. And so it is. Here hang bits of uniform, and somewhere
else is plastered a bloody mess that was once a human limb. Over there lies
a body with nothing but a piece of the underpants on one leg and the collar
of the tunic around its neck. Otherwise it is naked and the clothes are
hanging up in the tree. Both arms are missing as though they had been
pulled out. I discover one of them twenty yards off in a shrub.

The dead man lies on his face. There, where the arm wounds are, the
earth is black with blood. Underfoot the leaves are scratched up as though
the man had been kicking.

"That's no joke, Kat," say I.

"No more is a shell splinter in the belly," he replies, shrugging his
shoulders.

"But don't get tender-hearted," says Tjaden.

All this can only have happened a little while ago, the blood is still
fresh. As everybody we see there is dead we do not waste any more time,
but report the affair at the next stretcher-bearers' post. After all it is not our
business to take these stretcher-bearers' jobs away from them.

* *

A patrol has to be sent out to discover just how far the enemy position is
advanced. Since my leave I feel a certain strange attachment to the other
fellows, and so I volunteer to go with them. We agree on a plan, slip out
through the wire and then divide and creep forward separately. After a while
I find a shallow shell-hole and crawl into it. From here I peer forward.

There is moderate machine-gun fire. It sweeps across from all
directions, not very heavy, but always sufficient to make one keep down.

A parachute star-shell opens out. The ground lies stark in the pale light,
and then the darkness shuts down again blacker than ever. In the trenches
we were told there were black troops in front of us. That is nasty, it is hard
to see them; they are very good at patrolling, too. And oddly enough they
are often quite stupid; for instance, both Kat and Kropp were once able to
shoot down a black enemy patrol because the fellows in their enthusiasm
for cigarettes smoked while they were creeping about. Kat and Albert had
simply to aim at the glowing ends of the cigarettes.

A bomb or something lands close beside me. I have not heard it coming
and am terrified. At the same moment a senseless fear takes hold on me.
Here I am alone and almost helpless in the dark—perhaps two other eyes
have been watching me for a long while from another shell-hole in front of
me, and a bomb lies ready to blow me to pieces. I try to pull myself
together. It is not my first patrol and not a particularly risky one. But it is
the first since my leave, and besides, the lie of the land is still rather strange
to me.

I tell myself that my alarm is absurd, that there is probably nothing at all
there in the darkness watching me, because otherwise the missile would not
have landed so flat.

It is in vain. In whirling confusion my thoughts hum in my brain—I
hear the warning voice of my mother, I see the Russians with the flowing
beards leaning against the wire fence, I have a bright picture of a canteen
with stools, of a cinema in Valenciennes; tormented, terrified, in my
imagination I see the grey, impalpable muzzle of a rifle which moves

noiselessly before me whichever way I try to turn my head. The sweat
breaks out from every pore.

I still continue to lie in my shallow bowl. I look at the time; only a few
minutes have passed. My forehead is wet, the sockets of my eyes are damp,
my hands tremble, and I am panting softly. It is nothing but an awful spasm
of fear, a simple animal fear of poking out my head and crawling on farther.

All my efforts subside like froth into the one desire to be able just to
stay lying there. My limbs are glued to the earth. I make a vain attempt;—
they refuse to come away. I press myself down on the earth, I cannot go
forward, I make up my mind to stay lying there.

But immediately the wave floods over me anew, a mingled sense of
shame, of remorse, and yet at the same time of security. I raise myself up a
little to take a look around.

My eyes burn with staring into the dark. A star-shell goes up;—I duck
down again.

I wage a wild and senseless fight, I want to get out of the hollow and yet
slide back into it again, I say "You must, it is your comrades, it is not any
idiotic command," and again: "What does it matter to me, I have only one
life to lose——"

That is the result of all this leave, I reproach myself bitterly. But I
cannot convince myself, I become terribly faint. I raise myself slowly and
reach forward with my arms, dragging my body after me and then lie on the
edge of the shell-hole, half in and half out.

There I hear sounds and drop back. Suspicious sounds can be detected
clearly despite the noise of the artillery-fire. I listen; the sound is behind
me. They are our people moving along the trench. Now I hear muffled
voices. To judge by the tone that might be Kat talking.

At once a new warmth flows through me. These voices, these few quiet
words, these footsteps in the trench behind me recall me at a bound from
the terrible loneliness and fear of death by which I had been almost

destroyed. They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than
motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting
thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.

I am no longer a shuddering speck of existence, alone in the darkness;—
I belong to them and they to me, we all share the same fear and the same
life, we are nearer than lovers, in a simpler, a harder way; I could bury my
face in them, in these voices, these words that have saved me and will stand
by me.

* *

Cautiously I glide out over the edge and snake my way forward. I
shuffle along on all fours a bit farther, I keep track of my bearings, look
around me and observe the distribution of the gunfire so as to be able to
find my way back. Then I try to get in touch with the others.

I am still afraid, but it is an intelligent fear, an extraordinarily
heightened caution. The night is windy and shadows flit hither and thither
in the flicker of the gunfire. It reveals too little and too much. Often I peer
ahead, but always for nothing. Thus I advance a long way and then turn
back in a wide curve. I have not established touch with the others. Every
yard nearer our trench fills me with confidence;—and with haste, too. It
would be bad to get lost now.

Then a new fear lays hold of me. I can no longer remember the
direction. Quiet, I squat in a shell-hole and try to locate myself. More than
once it has happened that some fellow has jumped joyfully into a trench
only then to discover that it was the wrong one.

After a little time I listen again, but still I am not sure. The confusion of
shell-holes now seems so bewildering that I can no longer tell in my
agitation which way I should go. Perhaps I am crawling parallel to the lines,
and that might go on for ever. So I crawl round once again in a wide curve.

These damned rockets! They seem to burn for an hour, and a man
cannot make the least movement without bringing the bullets whistling
round.

But there is nothing for it, I must get out. Falteringly I work my way
farther, I move off over the ground like a crab and rip my hands sorely on
the jagged splinters, as sharp as razor blades. Often I think that the sky is
becoming lighter on the horizon, but it may be merely my imagination.
Then gradually I realize that to crawl in the right direction is a matter of life
or death.

A shell crashes. Almost immediately two others. And then it begins in
earnest. A bombardment. Machine-guns rattle. Now there is nothing for it
but to stay lying low. Apparently an attack is coming. Everywhere the
rockets shoot up. Unceasing.

I lie huddled in a large shell-hole, my legs in the water up to the belly.
When the attack starts I will let myself fall into the water, with my face as
deep in the mud as I can keep it without suffocating. I must pretend to be
dead.

Suddenly I hear the barrage lift. At once I slip down into the water, my
helmet on the nape of my neck and my mouth just clear so that I can get a
breath of air.

I lie motionless;—somewhere something clanks, it stamps and stumbles
nearer—all my nerves become taut and icy. It clatters over me and away,
the first wave has passed. I have but this one shattering thought: What will
you do if someone jumps into your shell-hole?— Swiftly I pull out my little
dagger, grasp it fast and bury it in my hand once again under the mud. If
anyone jumps in here I will go for him. It hammers in my forehead; at once,
stab him clean through the throat, so that he cannot call out; that's the only
way; he will be just as frightened as I am, when in terror we fall upon one
another, then I must be first.

Now our batteries are firing. A shell lands near me. That makes me
savage with fury, all it needs now is to be killed by our own shells; I curse
and grind my teeth in the mud; it is a raving frenzy; in the end all I can do is
groan and pray.

The crash of the shells bursts in my ears. If our fellows make a counter-
raid I will be saved. I press my head against the earth and listen to the

muffled thunder, like the explosions of quarrying—and raise it again to
listen for the sounds on top.

The machine-guns rattle. I know our barbed wire entanglements are
strong and almost undamaged;—parts of them are charged with a powerful
electric current. The rifle fire increases. They have not broken through; they
have to retreat.

I sink down again, huddled, strained to the uttermost. The banging, the
creeping, the clanging becomes audible. One single cry yelling amongst it
all. They are raked with fire, the attack is repulsed.

* *

Already it has become somewhat lighter. Steps hasten over me. The
first. Gone. Again, another. The rattle of machine-guns becomes an
unbroken chain. Just as I am about to turn round a little, something heavy
stumbles, and with a crash a body falls over me into the shell-hole, slips
down, and lies across me——

I do not think at all, I make no decision—I strike madly home, and feel
only how the body suddenly convulses, then becomes limp, and collapses.
When I recover myself, my hand is sticky and wet.

The man gurgles. It sounds to me as though he bellows, every gasping
breath is like a cry, a thunder—but it is only my heart pounding. I want to
stop his mouth, stuff it with earth, stab him again, he must be quiet, he is
betraying me; now at last I regain control of myself, but have suddenly
become so feeble that I cannot any more lift my hand against him.

So I crawl away to the farthest corner and stay there, my eyes glued on
him, my hand grasping the knife—ready, if he stirs, to spring at him again.
But he won't do so any more, I can hear that already in his gurgling.

I can see him indistinctly. I have but one desire, to get away. If it is not
soon it will be too light; it will be difficult enough now. Then as I try to
raise up my head I see it is impossible already. The machine-gun fire so

sweeps the ground that I would be shot through and through before I could
make one jump.

I test it once with my helmet, which I take off and hold up to find out
the level of the shots. The next moment it is knocked out of my hand by a
bullet. The fire is sweeping very low over the ground. I am not far enough
from the enemy line to escape being picked off by one of the snipers if I
attempt to get away.

The light increases. Burning I wait for our attack. My hands are white at
the knuckles, I clench them so tightly in my longing for the fire to cease so
that my comrades may come.

Minute after minute trickles away. I dare not look again at the dark
figure in the shell-hole. With an effort I look past it and wait, wait. The
bullets hiss, they make a steel net, never ceasing, never ceasing.

Then I notice my bloody hand and suddenly feel nauseated. I take some
earth and rub the skin with it, now my hand is muddy and the blood cannot
be seen any more.

The fire does not diminish. It is equally heavy from both sides. Our
fellows have probably given me up for lost long ago.

* *

It is early morning, clear and grey. The gurgling continues, I stop my
ears, but soon take my fingers away again, because then I cannot hear the
other sound.

The figure opposite me moves. I shrink together and involuntarily look
at it. Then my eyes remain glued to it. A man with a small pointed beard lies
there, his head is fallen to one side, one arm is half-bent, his head rests
helplessly upon it. The other hand lies on his chest, it is bloody.

He is dead, I say to myself, he must be dead, he doesn't feel anything
any more; it is only the body that is gurgling there. Then the head tries to
raise itself, for a moment the groaning becomes louder, his forehead sinks

back upon his arm. The man is not dead, he is dying, but he is not dead. I
drag myself toward him, hesitate, support myself on my hands, creep a bit
farther, wait, again a terrible journey of three yards, a long, a terrible
journey. At last I am beside him.

Then he opens his eyes. He must have heard me and gazes at me with a
look of utter terror. The body lies still, but in the eyes there is such an
extraordinary expression of flight that for a moment I think they have
power enough to carry the body off with them. Hundreds of miles away
with one bound. The body is still, perfectly still, without sound, the gurgle
has ceased, but the eyes cry out, yell, all the life is gathered together in
them for one tremendous effort to flee, gathered together there in a dreadful
terror of death, of me.

My legs give way and I drop on my elbows. "No, no," I whisper.

The eyes follow me. I am powerless to move so long as they are there.

Then his hand slips slowly from his breast, only a little bit, it sinks just a
few inches, but this movement breaks the power of the eyes. I bend
forward, shake my head and whisper: "No, no, no," I raise one hand, I must
show him that I want to help him, I stroke his forehead.

The eyes shrink back as the hand comes, then they lose their stare, the
eyelids droop lower, the tension is past. I open his collar and place his head
more comfortably upright.

His mouth stands half open, it tries to form words. The lips are dry. My
water bottle is not there. I have not brought it with me. But there is water in
the mud, down at the bottom of the crater. I climb down, take out my
handkerchief, spread it out, push it under and scoop up the yellow water
that strains through into the hollow of my hand.

He gulps it down. I fetch some more. Then I unbutton his tunic in order
to bandage him if it is possible. In any case I must do it, so that if the
fellows over there capture me they will see that I wanted to help him, and
so will not shoot me. He tries to resist, but his hand is too feeble. The shirt

is stuck and will not come away, it is buttoned at the back. So there is
nothing for it but to cut it off.

I look for the knife and find it again. But when I begin to cut the shirt
the eyes open once more and the cry is in them again and the demented
expression, so that I must close them, press them shut and whisper: "I want
to help you, Comrade, camerade, camerade, camerade——" eagerly
repeating the word, to make him understand.

There are three stabs. My field dressing covers them, the blood runs out
under it, I press it tighter; there; he groans.

That is all I can do. Now we must wait, wait.

* *

These hours.... The gurgling starts again—but how slowly a man dies!
For this I know—he cannot be saved. Indeed, I have tried to tell myself that
he will be, but at noon this pretence breaks down and melts before his
groans. If only I had not lost my revolver crawling about, I would shoot
him. Stab him I cannot.

By noon I am groping on the outer limits of reason. Hunger devours me,
I could almost weep for something to eat, I cannot struggle against it. Again
and again I fetch water for the dying man and drink some myself.

This is the first man I have killed with my hands, whom I can see close
at hand, whose death is my doing. Kat and Kropp and Müller have
experienced it already, when they have hit someone; it happens to many, in
hand-to-hand fighting especially—

But every gasp lays my heart bare. This dying man has time with him,
he has an invisible dagger with which he stabs me: Time and my thoughts.

I would give much if he would but stay alive. It is hard to lie here and to
have to see and hear him.

In the afternoon, about three, he is dead.

I breathe freely again. But only for a short time. Soon the silence is
more unbearable than the groans. I wish the gurgling were there again,
gasping, hoarse, now whistling softly and again hoarse and loud.

It is mad, what I do. But I must do something. I prop the dead man up
again so that he lies comfortably although he feels nothing any more. I
close his eyes. They are brown, his hair is black and a bit curly at the sides.

The mouth is full and soft beneath his moustache; the nose is slightly
arched, the skin brownish; it is now not so pale as it was before, when he
was still alive. For a moment the face seems almost healthy;—then it
collapses suddenly into the strange face of the dead that I have so often
seen, strange faces, all alike.

No doubt his wife still thinks of him; she does not know what has
happened. He looks as if he would often have written to her;—she will still
be getting mail from him—To-morrow, in a week's time—perhaps even a
stray letter a month hence. She will read it, and in it he will be speaking to
her.

My state is getting worse, I can no longer control my thoughts. What
would his wife look like? Like the little brunette on the other side of the
canal? Does she belong to me now? Perhaps by this act she becomes mine. I
wish Kantorek were sitting here beside me. If my mother could see me
——. The dead man might have had thirty more years of life if only I had
impressed the way back to our trench more sharply on my memory. If only
he had run two yards farther to the left, he might now be sitting in the
trench over there and writing a fresh letter to his wife.

But I will get no further that way; for that is the fate of all of us: if
Kemmerich's leg had been six inches to the right; if Haie Westhus had bent
his back three inches further forward——

* *

The silence spreads. I talk and must talk. So I speak to him and say to
him: "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I
would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to

me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its
appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first
time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your
bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our
fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they
never tell us that you are just poor devils like us, that your mothers are just
as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same
dying and the same agony—. Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my
enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my
brother just like Kat and Albert. Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and
stand up—take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with
it now."

It is quiet, the front is still except for the crackle of rifle fire. The bullets
rain over, they are not fired haphazard, but shrewdly aimed from all sides. I
cannot get out.

"I will write to your wife," I say hastily to the dead man, "I will write to
her, she must hear it from me, I will tell her everything I have told you, she
shall not suffer, I will help her, and your parents too, and your child——"

His tunic is half open. The pocket-book is easy to find. But I hesitate to
open it. In it is the book with his name. So long as I do not know his name
perhaps I may still forget him, time will obliterate it, this picture. But his
name, it is a nail that will be hammered into me and never come out again.
It has the power to recall this for ever, it will always come back and stand
before me.

Irresolutely I take the wallet in my hand. It slips out of my hand and
falls open. Some pictures and letters drop out. I gather them up and want to
put them back again, but the strain I am under, the uncertainty, the hunger,
the danger, these hours with the dead man have confused me, I want to
hasten the relief, to intensify and to end the torture, as one strikes an
unendurably painful hand against the trunk of a tree, regardless of
everything.

There are portraits of a woman and a little girl, small amateur
photographs taken against an ivy-clad wall. Along with them are letters. I

take them out and try to read them. Most of it I do not understand, it is so
hard to decipher and I know scarcely any French. But each word I translate
pierces me like a shot in the chest;—like a stab in the chest.

My brain is taxed beyond endurance. But I realize this much, that I will
never dare to write to these people as I intended. Impossible. I look at the
portraits once more; they are clearly not rich people. I might send them
money anonymously if I earn anything later on. I seize upon that, it is at
least something to hold on to. This dead man is bound up with my life,
therefore I must do everything, promise everything, in order to save myself;
I swear blindly that I mean to live only for his sake and his family, with wet
lips I try to placate him—and deep down in me lies the hope that I may buy
myself off in this way and perhaps even yet get out of this; it is a little
stratagem: if only I am allowed to escape, then I will see to it. So I open the
book and read slowly:—Gerard Duval, compositor.

With the dead man's pencil I write the address on an envelope, then
swiftly thrust everything back into his tunic.

I have killed the printer, Gerard Duval. I must be a printer, I think
confusedly, be a printer, printer——

* *

By afternoon I am calmer. My fear was groundless. The name troubles
me no more. The madness passes. "Comrade," I say to the dead man, but I
say it calmly, "To-day you, to-morrow me. But if I come out of it, comrade,
I will fight against this, that has struck us both down; from you, taken life—
and from me—? Life also. I promise you, comrade. It shall never happen
again."

The sun strikes low. I am stupefied with exhaustion and hunger.
Yesterday is like a fog to me, there is no hope of getting out of this yet. I
fall into a doze and do not at first realize that evening is approaching. The
twilight comes. It seems to me to come quickly now. One hour more. If it
were summer, it would be three hours more. One hour more.

Now suddenly I begin to tremble; something might happen in the
interval. I think no more of the dead man, he is of no consequence to me
now. With one bound the lust to live flares up again and everything that has
filled my thoughts goes down before it. Now, merely to avert any ill-luck, I
babble mechanically: "I will fulfil everything, fulfil everything I have
promised you——" but already I know that I shall not do so.

Suddenly it occurs to me that my own comrades may fire on me as I
creep up; they do not know I am coming. I will call out as soon as I can so
that they will recognize me. I will stay lying in front of the trench until they
answer me.

The first star. The front remains quiet. I breathe deeply and talk to
myself in my excitement: "No foolishness now, Paul—Quiet, Paul, quiet—
then you will be saved, Paul." When I use my Christian name it works as
though someone else spoke to me, it has more power.

The darkness grows. My excitement subsides, I wait cautiously until the
first rocket goes up. Then I crawl out of the shell-hole. I have forgotten the
dead man. Before me lies the on-coming night and the pale gleaming field. I
fix my eye on a shell-hole; the moment the light dies I scurry over into it,
grope farther, spring into the next, duck down, scramble onward.

I come nearer. There, by the light of a rocket I see something move in
the wire, then it stiffens and lies still. Next time I see it again, yes, they are
men from our trench. But I am suspicious until I recognize our helmets.
Then I call. And immediately an answer rings out, my name: "Paul—Paul
——"

I call again in answer. It is Kat and Albert who have come out with a
stretcher to look for me.

"Are you wounded?"

"No, no——"

We drop into the trench. I ask for something to eat and wolf it down.
Müller gives me a cigarette. In a few words I tell what happened. There is

nothing new about it; it happens quite often. The night attack is the only
unusual feature of the business. In Russia Kat once lay for two days behind
the enemy lines before he could make his way back.

I do not mention the dead printer.

But by next morning I can keep it to myself no longer. I must tell Kat
and Albert. They both try to calm me. "You can't do anything about it. What
else could you have done? That is what you are here for."

I listen to them and feel comforted, reassured by their presence. It was
mere drivelling nonsense that I talked out there in the shell-hole.

"Look there for instance," points Kat.

On the fire-step stand some snipers. They rest their rifles with telescopic
sights on the parapet and watch the enemy front. Once and again a shot
cracks out.

Then we hear the cry: "That's found a billet!" "Did you see how he leapt
in the air?" Sergeant Oellrich turns round proudly and scores his point. He
heads the shooting list for to-day with three unquestionable hits.

"What do you say to that?" asks Kat.

I nod.

"If he keeps that up he will get a little coloured bird for his buttonhole
by this evening," says Albert.

"Or rather he will soon be made acting-sergeant-major," says Kat.

We look at one another. "I would not do it," I say.

"All the same," says Kat, "it's very good for you to see it just now."

Sergeant Oellrich returns to the fire-step. The muzzle of his rifle
searches to and fro.

"You don't need to lose any more sleep over your affair," nods Albert.

And now I hardly understand it myself any more.

"It was only because I had to lie there with him so long," I say. "After
all, war is war."

Oellrich's rifle cracks out sharp and dry.

CHAPTER X

We have dropped in for a good job. Eight of us have to guard a village
that has been abandoned because it is being shelled too heavily.

In particular we have to watch the supply dump as that is not yet empty.
We are supposed to provision ourselves from the same store. We are just the
right people for that;—Kat, Albert, Müller, Tjaden, Detering, our whole
gang is there. Haie is dead, though. But we are mighty lucky all the same,
all the other squads have had more casualties than we have.

We select, as a dug-out, a reinforced concrete cellar into which steps
lead down from above. The entrance is protected by a separate concrete
wall.

Now we develop an immense industry. This is an opportunity not only
to stretch one's legs, but to stretch one's soul also. We make the best use of
such opportunities. The war is too desperate to allow us to be sentimental
for long. That is only possible so long as things are not going too badly.
After all, we cannot afford to be anything but matter-of-fact. So matter-of-
fact, indeed, that I often shudder when a thought from the days before the
war comes momentarily into my head. But it does not stay long.

We have to take things as lightly as we can, so we make the most of
every opportunity, and nonsense stands stark and immediate beside horror.

It cannot be otherwise, that is how we hearten ourselves. So we zealously
set to work to create an idyll—an idyll of eating and sleeping, of course.

The floor is first covered with mattresses which we haul in from the
houses. Even a soldier's behind likes to sit soft. Only in the middle of the
floor is there any clear space. Then we furnish ourselves with blankets and
eiderdowns, luxurious soft affairs. There is plenty of everything to be had in
the town. Albert and I find a mahogany bed which can be taken to pieces,
with a sky of blue silk and a lace coverlet. We sweat like monkeys moving
it in, but a man cannot let a thing like that slip, and it would certainly be
shot to pieces in a day or two.

Kat and I do a little patrolling through the houses. In very short time we
have collected a dozen eggs and two pounds of fairly fresh butter. Suddenly
there is a crash in the drawing room, and an iron stove hurtles through the
wall past us and on, a yard from us out through the wall behind. Two holes.
It comes from the house opposite where a shell has just landed. "The
swine," grimaces Kat, and we continue our search. All at once we prick up
our ears, hurry across, and suddenly stand petrified—there running up and
down in a little sty are two live sucking pigs. We rub our eyes and look once
again to make certain. Yes, they are still there. We seize hold of them—no
doubt about it, two real young pigs.

This will make a grand feed. About twenty yards from our dug-out there
is a small house that was used as an officers' billet. In the kitchen is an
immense fireplace with two ranges, pots, pans, and kettles—everything,
even to a stack of small chopped wood in an outhouse—a regular cook's
paradise.

Two of our fellows have been out in the fields all the morning hunting
for potatoes, carrots, and green peas. We are quite uppish and sniff at the
tinned stuff in the supply dump, we want fresh vegetables. In the dining-
room there are already two heads of cauliflower.

The sucking pigs are slaughtered. Kat sees to them. We want to make
potato cakes to go with the roast. But we cannot find a grater for the
potatoes. However, that difficulty is soon got over. With a nail we punch a
lot of holes in a pot lid and there we have a grater. Three fellows put on

thick gloves to protect their fingers against the grater, two others peel the
potatoes, and the business gets going.

Kat takes charge of the sucking pigs, the carrots, the peas, and the
cauliflower. He even mixes a white sauce for the cauliflower. I fry the
pancakes, four at a time. After ten minutes I get the knack of tossing the pan
so that the pancakes which are done on the one side sail up, turn in the air
and are caught again as they come down. The sucking pigs are baked
whole. We all stand round them as before an altar.

In the meantime we receive visitors, a couple of wireless-men, who are
generously invited to the feed. They sit in the living-room where there is a
piano. One of them plays, the other sings 'An der Weser.' He sings feelingly,
but with a rather Saxon accent. All the same it moves us as we stand at the
fireplace preparing the good things.

Then we begin to realize that we are in for trouble. The observation
balloons have spotted the smoke from our chimney, and the shells start to
drop on us. They are those damned spraying little daisy-cutters that make
only a small hole and scatter widely close to the ground. They keep
dropping closer and closer all round us; still we cannot leave the grub in the
lurch. A couple of splinters whizz through the top of the kitchen window.
The roast is already cooked. But frying the pancakes is getting difficult. The
explosions come so fast that the splinters strike often and oftener against the
wall of the house and sweep in through the window. Whenever I hear a
shell coming I drop down on one knee with the pan and the pancakes, and
duck behind the wall of the window. Immediately afterwards I am up again
and going on with the frying.

The Saxons stop singing—a fragment has smashed into the piano. At
last everything is ready and we organize the transport of it back to the dug-
out. After the next explosion two men dash across the fifty yards to the dug-
out with the pots of vegetables. We see them disappear.

The next shot. Everyone ducks and then two more trot off, each with a
big can of finest grade coffee, and reach the dug-out before the next
explosion.

Then Kat and Kropp seize the masterpiece—the big dish with the
brown, roasted sucking pigs. A screech, a knee bend, and away they race
over the fifty yards of open country.

I stay to finish frying my last four pancakes; twice I have to drop on the
floor;—after all, it means four pancakes more, and they are my favourite
dish.

Then I grab the plate with the great pile of cakes and squeeze myself
behind the house door. A hiss, a crash, and I gallop off with the plate
clamped against my chest with both hands. I am almost in, I run like a deer,
sweep round the wall, fragments clatter against the concrete, I tumble down
the cellar steps, my elbows are skinned, but I have not lost a single pancake,
nor even broken the plate.

About two o'clock we start the meal. It lasts till six. We drink coffee
until half-past seven—officers' coffee from the supply dump—and smoke
officers' cigars and cigarettes—also from the supply dump. Punctually at
half-past seven we begin the evening meal. About ten o'clock we throw the
bones of the sucking pigs outside the door. Then there is cognac and rum—
also from the blessed supply dump—and once again long, fat cigars with
belly-bands. Tjaden suggests that it lacks only one thing: Girls from an
officers' brothel.

Late in the evening we hear mewing. A little grey cat sits in the
entrance. We entice it in and give it something to eat. And that wakes up our
own appetites once more. Still chewing, we lie down to sleep.

But the night is bad. We have eaten too much fat. Fresh baby pig is very
griping to the bowels. There is an everlasting coming and going in the dug-
out. Two, three men with their pants down are always sitting about outside
and cursing. I have been out nine times myself. About four o'clock in the
morning we reach a record: all eleven men, guards and visitors, are
squatting outside.

Burning houses stand out like torches against the night. Shells lumber
across and crash down. Munition columns tear along the street. On one side
the supply dump has been ripped open. In spite of all the flying fragments

the drivers of the munition columns pour in like a swarm of bees and
pounce on the bread. We let them have their own way. If we said anything it
would only mean a good hiding for us. So we go differently about it. We
explain that we are the guard and so know our way about, we get hold of
the tinned stuff and exchange it for things we are short of. What does it
matter anyhow—in a while it will all be blown to pieces. For ourselves we
take some chocolate from the depot and eat it in slabs. Kat says it is good
for loose bowels.

Almost a fortnight passes thus in eating, drinking, and roaming about.
No one disturbs us. The town gradually vanishes under the shells and we
lead a charmed life. So long as any part of the supply dump still stands we
don't worry, we desire nothing better than to stay here till the end of the war.

Tjaden has become so fastidious that he only half smokes his cigars.
With his nose in the air he explains to us that he was brought up that way.
And Kat is most cheerful. In the morning his first call is: "Emil, bring in the
caviare and coffee." We put on extraordinary airs, every man treats the other
as his valet, bounces him and gives him orders. "There is something itching
under my foot; Kropp, my man, catch that louse at once," says Leer, poking
out his leg at him like a ballet girl, and Albert drags him up the stairs by the
foot. "Tjaden!"—"What?"—"Stand at ease, Tjaden; and what's more, don't
say 'What,' say 'Yes, Sir,'—now: Tjaden!" Tjaden retorts in the well-known
phrase from Goethe's "Götz von Berlichingen," with which he is always
very free.

After eight more days we receive orders to go back. The palmy days are
over. Two big motor lorries take us away. They are stacked high with
planks. Nevertheless, Albert and I erect on top our four-poster bed complete
with blue silk canopy, mattress, and two lace coverlets. And behind it at the
head is stowed a bag full of choice edibles. We often dip into it, and the
tough ham sausages, the tins of liver sausages, the conserves, the boxes of
cigarettes rejoice our hearts. Each man has a bag to himself.

Kropp and I have rescued two big red armchairs as well. They stand
inside the bed, and we sprawl back in them as in a theatre box. Above us
swells the silken cover like a baldaquin. Each man has a long cigar in his
mouth. And thus from aloft we survey the scene.

Between us stands a parrot-cage that we found for the cat. She is
coming with us, and lies in the cage before her saucer of meat, and purrs.

Slowly the lorries roll down the road. We sing. Behind us the shells are
sending up fountains from the now utterly abandoned town.

* *

A few days later we are sent out to evacuate a village. On the way we
meet the fleeing inhabitants trundling their goods and chattels along with
them in wheel-barrows, perambulators, and on their backs. Their figures are
bent, their faces full of grief, despair, haste, and resignation. The children
hold on to their mothers' hands, and often an older girl leads the little ones
who stumble onward and are for ever looking back. A few carry miserable-
looking dolls. All are silent as they pass us by.

We are marching in column; the French do not fire on a town in which
there are still inhabitants. But a few minutes later the air screams, the earth
heaves, cries ring out; a shell has landed among the rear squad. We scatter
and fling ourselves down on the ground, but at that moment I feel the
instinctive alertness leave me which hitherto has always made me do
unconsciously the right thing under fire; the thought leaps up with a terrible,
throttling fear: "You are lost"—and the next moment a blow sweeps like a
whip over my left leg. I hear Albert cry out; he is beside me.

"Quick, up, Albert!" I yell, for we are lying unsheltered in the open
field.

He staggers up and runs. I keep beside him. We have to get over a
hedge; it is higher than we are. Kropp seizes a branch, I heave him up by
the leg, he cries out, I give him a swing and he flies over. With one leap I
follow him and fall into a ditch that lies behind the hedge.

Our faces are smothered with duck-weed and mud, but the cover is
good. So we wade in up to our necks. Whenever a shell whistles we duck
our heads under the water. After we have done this a dozen times, I am
exhausted.

"Let's get away, or I'll fall in and drown," groans Albert.

"Where has it got you?" I ask him.

"In the knee, I think."

"Can you run?"

"I think——"

"Then out!"

We make for the ditch beside the road, and stooping, run along it. The
shelling follows us. The road leads toward the munition dump. If that goes
up there won't be a man of us with his head left on his shoulders. So we
change our plan and run diagonally across country.

Albert begins to drag. "You go, I'll come on after," he says, and throws
himself down.

I seize him by the arm and shake him. "Up, Albert, if once you lie down
you'll never get any farther. Quick, I'll hold you up."

At last we reach a small dug-out. Kropp pitches in and I bandage him
up. The shot is just a little above his knee. Then I take a look at myself. My
trousers are bloody and my arm, too. Albert binds up my wounds with his
field dressing. Already he is no longer able to move his leg, and we both
wonder how we managed to get this far. Fear alone made it possible; we
would have run even if our feet had been shot off;—we would have run on
the stumps.

I can still crawl a little. I call out to a passing ambulance wagon which
picks us up. It is full of wounded. There is an army medical lance-corporal
with it who sticks an anti-tetanus needle into our chests.

At the dressing station we arrange matters so that we lie side by side.
They give us a thin soup which we spoon down greedily and scornfully,
because we are accustomed to better times but are hungry all the same.

"Now for home, Albert," I say.

"Let's hope so," he replies, "I only wish I knew what I've got."

The pain increases. The bandages burn like fire. We drink and drink,
one glass of water after another.

"How far above the knee am I hit?" asks Kropp.

"At least four inches, Albert," I answer. Actually it is perhaps one.

"I've made up my mind," he says after a while, "if they take off my leg,
I'll put an end to it. I won't go through life as a cripple."

So we lie there with our thoughts and wait.

* *

In the evening we are hauled on to the chopping-block. I am frightened
and think quickly what I ought to do; for everyone knows that the surgeons
in the dressing stations amputate on the slightest provocation. Under the
great pressure of business that is much simpler than complicated patching. I
think of Kemmerich. Whatever happens I will not let them chloroform me,
even if I have to crack a couple of their skulls.

It is all right. The surgeon pokes around in the wound and a blackness
comes before my eyes. "Don't carry on so," he says gruffly, and hacks away.
The instruments gleam in the bright light like malevolent animals. The pain
is insufferable. Two orderlies hold my arms fast, but I break loose with one
of them and try to crash into the surgeon's spectacles just as he notices and
springs back. "Chloroform the scoundrel," he roars madly.

Then I become quiet. "Pardon me, Herr Doctor, I will keep still, but do
not chloroform me."

"Well now," he cackles and takes up his instrument again. He is a fair
fellow, not more than thirty years old, with scars and disgusting gold
spectacles. Now I see that he is tormenting me, he is merely raking about in
the wound and looking up surreptitiously at me over his glasses. My hands

squeeze around the grips, I'll kick the bucket before he will get a squeak out
of me.

He has fished out a piece of shell and tosses it to me. Apparently he is
pleased at my self-control, for he seems to be more considerate of me now
and says: "To-morrow you'll be off home." Then I am put in plaster. When I
am back again with Kropp I tell him that apparently a hospital train comes
in to-morrow morning.

"We must work the army medical sergeant-major so that we can keep
together, Albert."

I manage to slip the sergeant-major two of my cigars with belly-bands,
and then tip the word to him. He smells the cigars and says: "Have you got
any more of them?"

"Another good handful," I say, "and my comrade," I point to Kropp, "he
has some as well. We might possibly be glad to hand them to you out of the
window of the hospital train in the morning."

He understands, of course, smells them once again and says: "Done."

We cannot get a minute's sleep all night. Seven fellows die in our ward.
One of them sings hymns in a high cracked tenor before he begins to
gurgle. Another has crept out of his bed to the window. He lies in front of it
as though he wants to look out for the last time.

* *

Our stretchers stand on the platform. We wait for the train. It rains and
the station has no roof. Our covers are thin. We have waited already two
hours.

The sergeant-major looks after us like a mother. Although I feel pretty
bad I do not let our scheme out of my mind. Occasionally I let him see the
packet and give him one cigar in advance. In exchange the sergeant-major
covers us over with a water-proof sheet.

"Albert, old man," I suddenly bethink myself, "our four poster and the
cat——"

"And the club chairs," he adds.

Yes, the club chairs with red plush. In the evening we used to sit in them
like lords, and intended later on to let them out by the hour. One cigarette
per hour. It might have turned into a regular business, a real good living.

"And our bags of grub, too, Albert."

We grow melancholy. We might have made some use of the things. If
only the train left one day later Kat would be sure to find us and bring us
the stuff.

What damned hard luck! In our bellies there is gruel, mean hospital
stuff, and in our bags roast pork. But we are so weak that we cannot work
up any more excitement about it.

The stretchers are sopping wet by the time the train arrives in the
morning. The sergeant-major sees to it that we are put in the same car.
There is a crowd of red-cross nurses. Kropp is stowed in below. I am lifted
up and put into the bed above him.

"Good God!" I exclaim suddenly.

"What is it?" asks the sister.

I cast a glance at the bed. It is covered with clean snow-white linen, that
even has the marks of the iron still on it. And my shirt has gone six weeks
without being washed and is terribly muddy.

"Can't you get in by yourself?" asks the sister gently.

"Why yes," I say in a sweat, "but take off the bed cover first."

"What for?"

I feel like a pig. Must I get in there?—"It will get——" I hesitate.

"A little bit dirty?" she suggests helpfully. "That doesn't matter, we will
wash it again afterwards."

"No, no, not that——" I say excitedly. I am not equal to such
overwhelming refinement.

"When you have been lying out there in the trenches, surely we can
wash a sheet," she goes on.

I look at her, she is young and crisp, spotless and neat, like everything
here; a man cannot realize that it isn't for officers only, and feels himself
strange and in some way even alarmed.

All the same, the woman is a tormentor, she is going to force me to say
it. "It is only——" I try again, surely she must know what I mean.

"What is it then?"

"Because of the lice," I bawl out at last.

She laughs. "Well, they must have a good day for once, too."

Now I don't care any more. I scramble into bed and pull up the covers.

A hand gropes over the bed-cover. The sergeant-major. He goes off with
the cigars.

An hour later we notice that we are moving.

At night I cannot sleep. Kropp is restless too. The train rides easily over
the rails. I cannot realize it all yet; a bed, a train, home. "Albert!" I whisper.

"Yes——"

"Do you know where the latrine is?"

"Over to the right of the door, I think."

"I'm going to have a look." It is dark, I grope for the edge of the bed and
cautiously try to slide down. But my foot finds no support, I begin to slip,
the plaster leg is no help, and with a crash I lie on the floor.

"Damn!" I say.

"Have you bumped yourself?" asks Kropp.

"You could hear that well enough for yourself," I growl, "my head——"

A door opens in the rear of the car. The sister comes with a light and
looks at me.

"He has fallen out of bed——"

She feels my pulse and smooths my forehead. "You haven't any fever,
though."

"No." I agree.

"Have you been dreaming then?" she asks.

"Perhaps——" I evade. The interrogation starts again. She looks at me
with her clear eyes, and the more wonderful and sweet she is the less am I
able to tell her what I want.

I am lifted up into bed again. That will be all right. As soon as she goes
I must try to climb down again. If she were an old woman, it might be
easier to say what a man wants, but she is so very young, at the most
twenty-five, it can't be done, I cannot possibly tell her.

Then Albert comes to my rescue, he is not bashful, it makes no
difference to him who is upset. He calls to the sister. She turns round.
"Sister, he wants——" but no more does Albert know how to express it
modestly and decently. Out there we say it in a single word, but here, to
such a lady—— All at once he remembers his school days and finishes
hastily: "He wants to leave the room, sister."

"Ah!" says the sister, "but he shouldn't climb out of his bed with his
plaster bandage. What do you want then?" she says, turning to me.

I am in mortal terror at this new turn, for I haven't any idea what the
things are called professionally. She comes to my help.

"Little or big?"

This shocking business! I sweat like a pig and say shyly: "Well, only
quite a little one——"

At any rate, it produces the effect.

I get a bottle. After a few hours I am no longer the only one, and by
morning we are quite accustomed to it and ask for what we want without
any false modesty.

The train travels slowly. Sometimes it halts and the dead are unloaded.
It halts often.

Albert is feverish. I feel miserable and have a good deal of pain, but the
worst of it is that apparently there are still lice under the plaster bandage.
They itch terribly, and I cannot scratch myself.

We sleep through the days. The country glides quietly past the window.
The third night we reach Herbstal. I hear from the sister that Albert is to be
put off at the next station because of his fever. "How far does the train go?"
I ask.

"To Cologne."

"Albert," I say, "we stick together; you see."

On the sister's next round I hold my breath and press it up into my head.
My face swells and turns red. She stops. "Are you in pain?" "Yes," I groan,
"all of a sudden."

She gives me a thermometer and goes on. I would not have been under
Kat's tuition if I did not know what to do now. These army thermometers

are not made for old soldiers. All one has to do is to drive the quicksilver up
and then it stays there without falling again.

I stick the thermometer under my arm at a slant, and flip it steadily with
my forefinger. Then I give it a shake. I send it up to 100.2°. But that is not
enough. A match held cautiously near to it brings it up to 101.6°.

As the sister comes back, I blow myself out, breathe in short gasps,
goggle at her with vacant eyes, toss about restlessly, and mutter in a
whisper: "I can't bear it any longer——"

She notes me down on a slip of paper. I know perfectly well my plaster
bandage will not be re-opened if it can be avoided. Albert and I are put off
together.

* *

We are in the same room in a Catholic Hospital. That is a piece of luck,
the Catholic infirmaries are noted for their good treatment and good food.
The hospital has been filled up from our train, there are a great many bad
cases amongst them. We do not get examined to-day because there are too
few surgeons. The flat trolleys with the rubber wheels pass continually
along the corridor, and always with someone stretched at full length upon
them. A damnable position, stretched out at full length like that;—the only
time it is good is when one is asleep.

The night is very disturbed. No one can sleep. Toward morning we doze
a little. I wake up just as it grows light. The door stands open and I hear
voices from the corridor. The others wake up too. One fellow, who has been
there a couple of days already explains it to us: "Up here in the corridor
every morning the sisters say prayers. They call it Morning Devotion. And
so that you can get your share, they leave the door open."

No doubt it is well meant, but it gives us aches in our head and bones.

"Such an absurdity!" I say, "just when a man dropped off to sleep."

"All the light cases are up here, that's why they do it here," he replies.

Albert groans. I get furious and call out: "Be quiet out there!"

A minute later a sister appears. In her black and white dress she looks
like a beautiful tea-cosy. "Shut the door, will you, sister?" says someone.

"We are saying prayers, that is why the door is open," she responds.

"But we want to go on sleeping——"

"Prayer is better than sleep," she stands there and smiles innocently.
"And it is seven o'clock already."

Albert groans again. "Shut the door," I snort.

She is quite disconcerted. Apparently she cannot understand. "But we
are saying prayers for you too."

"Shut the door, anyway."

She disappears leaving the door open. The intoning of the Litany
proceeds.

I feel savage, and say: "I'm going to count up to three. If it doesn't stop
before then I'll let something fly."

"Me, too," says another.

I count up to five. Then I take hold of a bottle, aim, and heave it through
the door into the corridor. It smashes into a thousand pieces. The praying
stops. A swarm of sisters appear and reproach us in concert.

"Shut the door!" we yell.

They withdraw. The little one who came first is the last to go.
"Heathen," she chirps, but shuts the door all the same. We have won.

* *

At noon the hospital inspector arrives and abuses us. He threatens us
with clink and all the rest of it. But a hospital inspector is just the same as a
commissariat inspector, or any one else who wears a long dagger and
shoulder straps, but is really a clerk, and is never considered even by a
recruit as a real officer. So we let him talk. What can they do to us, anyway
——

"Who threw the bottle?" he asks.

Before I can think whether I should report myself, someone says: "I
did."

A man with a bristling beard sits up. Everyone is excited; why should he
report himself?

"You?"

"Yes. I was annoyed because we were waked up unnecessarily and lost
my senses so that I did not know what I was doing."

He talks like a book.

"What is your name?"

"Reinforcement-Reservist Josef Hamacher."

The inspector departs.

We are all curious. "But why did you say you did it? It wasn't you at
all!"

He grins. "That doesn't matter. I have a shooting licence."

Then, of course, we all understand. Whoever has a shooting licence can
do just whatever he pleases.

"Yes," he explains, "I got a crack in the head and they presented me
with a certificate to say that I was periodically not responsible for my

actions. Ever since then I've had a grand time. No one dares to annoy me.
And nobody does anything to me."

"I reported myself because the shot amused me. If they open the door
again to-morrow we will pitch another."

We are overjoyed. With Josef Hamacher in our midst we can now risk
anything.

Then come the soundless, flat trollies to take us away.

The bandages are stuck fast. We bellow like steers.

* *

There are eight men in our room. Peter, a curly black-haired fellow, has
the worst injury;—a severe lung wound. Franz Wächter, alongside him, has
a shot in the arm which didn't look too bad at first. But the third night he
calls out to us, telling us to ring, he thinks he has a hæmorrhage.

I ring loudly. The night sister does not come. We have been making
rather heavy demands on her during the night, because we have all been
freshly bandaged, and so have a good deal of pain. One wants his leg placed
so, another so, a third wants water, a fourth wants her to shake up his
pillow;—in the end the buxom old body grumbled bad temperedly and
slammed the doors. Now no doubt she thinks it is something of the same
sort and so she is not coming.

We wait. Then Franz says: "Ring again."

I do so. Still she does not put in an appearance. In our wing there is only
one night sister, perhaps she has something to do in one of the other rooms.
"Franz, are you quite sure you are bleeding?" I ask. "Otherwise we shall be
getting cursed again."

"The bandage is wet. Can't anybody make a light?"

That cannot be done either. The switch is by the door and none of us can
stand up. I hold my thumb against the button of the bell till it becomes

numb. Perhaps the sister has fallen asleep. They certainly have a great deal
to do and are all overworked day after day. And added to that is the
everlasting praying.

"Should we smash a bottle?" asks Josef Hamacher of the shooting
licence.

"She wouldn't hear that any more than the bell."

At last the door opens. The old lady appears, mumbling. When she
perceives Franz's trouble she begins to bustle, and says: "Why did not
someone say I was wanted?"

"We did ring. And none of us here can walk."

He has been bleeding badly and she binds him up. In the morning we
look at his face, it has become sharp and yellow, whereas the evening
before he looked almost healthy. Now a sister comes oftener.

* *

Sometimes there are red-cross voluntary aid sisters. They are pleasant,
but often rather unskilled. They frequently give us pain when re-making our
beds, and then are so frightened that they hurt us still more.

The nuns are more reliable. They know how they must take hold of us,
but we would be more pleased if they were somewhat more cheerful. A few
of them have real spirit, they are superb. There is no one who would not do
anything for Sister Libertine, this marvellous sister, who spreads good cheer
through the whole wing even when she can only be seen in the distance.
And there are others like her. We would go through fire for her. A man
cannot really complain, here he is treated by the nuns exactly like a civilian.
On the other hand, just to think of a garrison hospital gives a man the
creeps.

Franz Wachter does not regain his strength. One day he is taken away
and does not come back. Josef Hamacher knows all about it: "We shan't see
him again. They have put him in the dead room."

"What do you mean, Dead Room?" asks Kropp.

"Well, Dying Room——"

"What is that, then?"

"A little room at the corner of the building. Whoever is about to kick the
bucket is put in there. There are two beds in it. It is generally called the
Dying Room."

"But what do they do that for?"

"They don't have so much work to do afterwards. It is more convenient,
too, because it lies right beside the lift to the mortuary. Perhaps also they do
it for the sake of the others, so that no one in the ward dies in sympathy.
And they can look after him better, too, if he is by himself."

"But what about him?"

Josef shrugs his shoulders. "Usually he doesn't take much notice any
more."

"Does everybody know about it then?"

"Anyone who has been here long enough knows, of course."

* *

In the afternoon Franz Wachter's bed has a fresh occupant. A couple of
days later they take the new man away, too. Josef makes a significant
gesture. We see many come and go.

Often relatives sit by the beds and weep or talk softly and awkwardly.
One old woman will not go away, but she cannot stay there the whole night
through. Another morning she comes very early, but not early enough; for
as she goes up to the bed, someone else is in it already. She has to go to the
mortuary. The apples that she has brought with her she gives to us.

And then little Peter begins to get worse. His temperature chart looks
bad, and one day the flat trolley stands beside his bed. "Where to?" he asks.

"To the bandaging ward."

He is lifted out. But the sister makes the mistake of removing his tunic
from the hook and putting it on the trolley too, so that she should not have
to make two journeys. Peter understands immediately and tries to roll off
the trolley. "I'm stopping here!"

They push him back. He cries out feebly with his shattered lung: "I
won't go to the Dying Room."

"But we are going to the bandaging ward."

"Then what do you want my tunic for?" He can speak no more. Hoarse,
agitated, he whispers: "Stopping here!"

They do not answer but wheel him out. At the door he tries to raise
himself up. His black curly head sways, his eyes are full of tears. "I will
come back again! I will come back again!" he cries.

The door shuts. We are all excited; but we say nothing. At last Josef
says: "Many a man has said that. Once a man is in there, he never comes
through."

* *

I am operated on and vomit for two days. My bones will not grow
together, so the surgeon's secretary says. Another fellow's have grown
crooked; his are broken again. It is disgusting.

Among our new arrivals there are two young soldiers with flat feet. The
chief surgeon discovers them on his rounds, and is overjoyed. "We'll soon
put that right," he tells them, "we will just do a small operation, and then
you will have perfectly sound feet. Enter them down, sister."

As soon as he is gone, Josef, who knows everything, warns them:
"Don't you let him operate on you! That is a special scientific stunt of the

old boy's. He goes absolutely crazy whenever he can get hold of anyone to
do it on. He operates on you for flat feet, and there's no mistake, you don't
have them any more; you have club feet instead, and have to walk all the
rest of your life on sticks."

"What should a man do, then?" asks one of them.

"Say No. You are here to be cured of your wound, not your flat feet. Did
you have any trouble with them in the field? No, well, there you are! At
present you can still walk, but if once the old boy gets you under the knife
you'll be cripples. What he wants is little dogs to experiment with, so the
war is a glorious time for him, as it is for all the surgeons. You take a look
down below at the staff; there are a dozen fellows hobbling around that he
has operated on. A lot of them have been here all the time since 'fourteen
and 'fifteen. Not a single one of them can walk better than he could before,
almost all of them worse, and most only with plaster legs. Every six months
he catches them again and breaks their bones afresh, and every time is
going to be the successful one. You take my word, he won't dare to do it if
you say No."

"Ach, man," says one of the two unfortunates, "better your feet than
your brain-box. There's no telling what you'll get if you go back out there
again. They can do with me just as they please, so long as I get back home.
Better to have a club foot than be dead."

The other, a young fellow like ourselves, won't have it done. One
morning the old man has the two hauled up and lectures and jaws at them so
long, that in the end they consent. What else could they do?—They are
mere privates, and he is a big bug. They are brought back chloroformed and
plastered.

* *

It is going badly with Albert. They have taken him and amputated his
leg. The whole leg has been taken off from the thigh. Now he hardly speaks
any more. Once he says he will shoot himself the first time he can get hold
of his revolver again.

A new convoy arrives. Our room gets two blind men. One of them is a
very youthful musician. The sisters never have a knife with them when they
feed him; he has already snatched one from a sister. But in spite of this
caution there is an incident. In the evening, while he is being fed, the sister
is called away, and leaves the plate with the fork on his table. He gropes for
the fork, seizes it and drives it with all his force against his heart, then he
snatches up a shoe and strikes with it against the handle as hard as he can.
We call for help and three men are necessary to take the fork away from
him. The blunt prongs had already penetrated deep. He abuses us all night
so that no one can go to sleep. In the morning he has lock-jaw.

Again beds become empty. Day after day goes by with pain and fear,
groans and death-gurgles. Even the Death Room is no use any more, it is
too small; fellows die during the night in our room. They go even faster
than the sisters can cope with them.

But one day the door flies open, the flat trolley rolls in, and there on the
stretcher, pale, thin, upright and triumphant, with his shaggy head of curls
sits Peter. Sister Libertine with beaming looks pushes him over to his
former bed. He is back from the Dying Room. We have long supposed him
dead.

He looks round: "What do you say now?"

And even Josef has to admit that it is the first time he has ever known of
such a thing.

* *

Gradually a few of us venture to stand up. And I am given crutches to
hobble around on. But I do not make much use of them; I cannot bear
Albert's gaze as I move about the room. His eyes always follow me with
such a strange look. So I sometimes escape to the corridor;—there I can
move about more freely.

On the next floor below are the abdominal and spine cases, head
wounds and double amputations. On the right side of the wing are the jaw
wounds, gas cases, nose, ear, and neck wounds. On the left the blind and the

lung wounds, pelvis wounds, wounds in the joints, wounds in the testicles,
wounds in the intestines. Here a man realizes for the first time in how many
places a man can get hit.

Two fellows die of tetanus. Their skin turns pale, their limbs stiffen, at
last only their eyes live—stubbornly. Many of the wounded have their
shattered limbs hanging free in the air from a gallows; underneath the
wound a basin is placed into which the pus drips. Every two or three hours
the vessel is emptied. Other men lie in stretching bandages with heavy
weights hanging from the end of the bed. I see intestine wounds that are
constantly full of excreta. The surgeon's clerk shows me X-ray photographs
of completely smashed hip-bones, knees, and shoulders.

A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still
human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one
hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany,
hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How
senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when
such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the
culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being
poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A
hospital alone shows what war is.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but
despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.
I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly,
foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest
brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined
and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the
whole world, see these things; all my generation is experiencing these
things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and
came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a
time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has
been killing;—it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is
limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of
us?

* *

The oldest man in our room is Lewandowski. He is forty, and has
already lain ten months in the hospital with a severe abdominal wound. Just
in the last few weeks he has improved sufficiently to be able to hobble
about doubled up.

For some days past he has been in great excitement. His wife has
written to him from the little home in Poland where she lives, telling him
that she has saved up enough money to pay for the fare, and is coming to
see him.

She is already on the way and may arrive any day. Lewandowski has
lost his appetite, he even gives away red cabbage and sausage after he has
had a couple of mouthfuls. He goes round the room perpetually with the
letter. Everyone has already read it a dozen times, the post-marks have been
examined heaven knows how often, the address is hardly legible any longer
for spots of grease and thumb-marks, and in the end what is sure to happen,
happens: Lewandowski develops a fever, and has to go back to bed.

He has not seen his wife for two years. In the meantime she has given
birth to a child, whom she is bringing with her. But something else occupies
Lewandowski's thoughts. He had hoped to get permission to go out when
his old woman came; for obviously seeing is all very well, but when a man
gets his wife again after such a long time, if at all possible, a man wants
something else besides.

Lewandowski has discussed it all with us at great length; in the army
there are no secrets about such things. And what's more, nobody finds
anything objectionable in it. Those of us who are already able to go out
have told him of a couple of very good spots in the town, parks and squares,
where he would not be disturbed; one of us even knows of a little room.

But what is the use, there Lewandowski lies in bed with his troubles.
Life holds no more joy for him if he has to forego this affair. We console
him and promise to get over the difficulty somehow or other.

One afternoon his wife appears, a tousled little thing with anxious,
quick eyes like a bird, in a sort of black, crinkly mantilla with ribbons;
heaven knows where she inherited the thing.

She murmurs something softly and stands shyly in the doorway. It
terrifies her that there are six of us men present.

"Well, Marja," says Lewandowski, and gulps dangerously with his
Adam's apple, "you can come in all right, they won't hurt you."

She goes the round and proffers each of us her hand. Then she produces
the child, which in the interval has done something in its napkin. From a
large handbag embroidered with pearls she takes out a clean one and makes
the child fresh and presentable. This dispels her first embarrassment, and
the two begin to talk.

Lewandowski is very fidgety, every now and then he squints across at
us most unhappily with his round goggle eyes.

The time is favourable, the doctor's visit is over, at the most there
couldn't be more than one sister left in the ward. So one of us goes out to
prospect. He comes back and nods.

"Not a soul to be seen. Now's your chance, Johann, set to."

The two speak together in an undertone. The woman turns a little red
and looks embarrassed. We grin good-naturedly and make pooh-poohing
gestures, what does it matter! The devil take all the conventions, they were
made for other times; here lies the carpenter Johann Lewandowski, a soldier
shot to a cripple, and there is his wife; who knows when he will see her
again? He wants to have her, and he should have her, good.

Two men stand at the door to forestall the sisters and keep them
occupied if they chance to come along. They agree to stand guard for a
quarter of an hour or thereabouts.

Lewandowski can only lie on his side, so one of us props a couple of
pillows against his back. Albert gets the child to hold, we all turn round a
bit, the black mantilla disappears under the bed-clothes, we make a great
clatter and play skat noisily.

All goes well. I hold a club solo with four jacks which nearly goes the
round. In the process we almost forget Lewandowski. After a while the
child begins to squall, although Albert, in desperation, rocks it to and fro.
Then there is a bit of creaking and rustling, and as we look up casually we
see that the child has the bottle in its mouth, and is back again with its
mother. The business is over.

We now feel ourselves like one big family, the woman is rather quieter,
and Lewandowski lies there sweating and beaming.

He unpacks the embroidered handbag, and some good sausages come to
light; Lewandowski takes up the knife with a flourish and saws the meat
into slices.

With a handsome gesture he waves toward us—and the little woman
goes from one to the other and smiles at us and hands round the sausage;
she now looks quite handsome. We call her Mother, she is pleased and
shakes up our pillows for us.

* *

After a few weeks I have to go each morning to the massage
department. There my leg is harnessed up and made to move. The arm has
healed long since.

New convoys arrive from the line. The bandages are no longer made of
cloth, but of white crêpe paper. Rag bandages have become scarce at the
front.

Albert's stump heals well. The wound is almost closed. In a few weeks
he should go off to an institute for artificial limbs. He continues not to talk
much, and is much more solemn than formerly. He often breaks off in his
speech and stares in front of him. If he were not here with us he would have
shot himself long ago. But now he is over the worst of it, and he often looks
on while we play skat.

I get convalescent leave.

My mother does not want to let me go away. She is so feeble. It is all
much worse than it was last time.

Then I am sent on from the base and return once more to the line.

Parting from my friend Albert Kropp was very hard. But a man gets
used to that sort of thing in the army.

CHAPTER XI

We count the weeks no more. It was winter when I came up, and when
the shells exploded the frozen clods of earth were just as dangerous as the
fragments. Now the trees are green again. Our life alternates between billets
and the front. We have almost grown accustomed to it; war is a cause of
death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery. The deaths
are merely more frequent, more varied and terrible.

Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;—
when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of
craters within and without.

Everyone is so, not only ourselves here—the things that existed before
are no longer valid, and one practically knows them no more. Distinctions,
breeding, education are changed, are almost blotted out and hardly
recognizable any longer. Sometimes they give an advantage for profiting by
a situation;—but they also bring consequences along with them, in that they
arouse prejudices which have to be overcome. It is as though formerly we
were coins of different provinces; and now we are melted down, and all
bear the same stamp. To re-discover the old distinctions, the metal itself
must be tested. First we are soldiers and afterwards, in a strange and
shamefaced fashion, individual men as well.

It is a great brotherhood, which to a condition of life arising out of the
midst of danger, out of the tension and forlornness of death, adds something

of the good-fellowship of the folk-song, of the feeling of solidarity of
convicts, and of the desperate loyalty to one another of men condemned to
death—seeking in a wholly unpathetic way a fleeting enjoyment of the
hours as they come. If one wants to appraise it, it is at once heroic and banal
—but who wants to do that?

It is this, for example, that makes Tjaden spoon down his ham-and-pea
soup in such tearing haste when an enemy attack is reported, simply
because he cannot be sure that in an hour's time he will still be alive. We
have discussed at length, whether it is right or not to do so. Kat condemns
it, because, he says, a man has to reckon with the possibility of an
abdominal wound, and that is more dangerous on a full stomach than on an
empty one.

Such things are real problems, they are serious matters to us, they
cannot be otherwise. Here, on the borders of death, life follows an
amazingly simple course, it is limited to what is most necessary, all else lies
buried in gloomy sleep;—in that lies our primitiveness and our survival.
Were we more subtly differentiated we must long since have gone mad,
have deserted, or have fallen. As in a polar expedition, every expression of
life must serve only the preservation of existence, and is absolutely
focussed on that. All else is banished because it would consume energies
unnecessarily. That is the only way to save ourselves. In the quiet hours
when the puzzling reflection of former days, like a blurred mirror, projects
beyond me the figure of my present existence, I often sit over against
myself, as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active
principle that calls itself Life has adapted itself even to this form. All other
expressions lie in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual watch against
the menace of death;—it has transformed us into unthinking animals in
order to give us the weapon of instinct—it has reinforced us with dullness,
so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us
if we had clear, conscious thought—it has awakened in us the sense of
comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude—it has lent us the
indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all we perceive the positive
in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of
nothingness. Thus we live a closed, hard existence of the utmost

superficiality, and rarely does an incident strike out a spark. But then
unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up.

Those are the dangerous moments. They show us that the adjustment is
only artificial, that it is not simple rest, but sharpest struggle for rest. In the
outward form of our life we are hardly distinguishable from Bushmen; but
whereas the latter can be so always, because they are so truly, and at best
may develop further by exertion of their spiritual forces, with us it is the
reverse;—our inner forces are not exerted toward regeneration, but toward
degeneration. The Bushmen are primitive and naturally so, but we are
primitive in an artificial sense, and by virtue of the utmost effort.

And at night, waking out of a dream, overwhelmed and bewitched by
the crowding faces, a man perceives with alarm how slight is the support,
how thin the boundary that divides him from the darkness. We are little
flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and
madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out. Then the
muffled roar of the battle becomes a ring that encircles us, we creep in upon
ourselves, and with big eyes stare into the night. Our only comfort is the
steady breathing of our comrades asleep, and thus we wait for the morning.

* *

Every day and every hour every shell and every death cuts into this thin
support, and the years waste it rapidly. I see how it is already gradually
breaking down around me.

There is the mad story of Detering.

He was one of those who kept himself to himself. His misfortune was
that he saw a cherry tree in a garden. We were just coming back from the
front line, and at a turning of the road near our new billets, marvellous in
the morning twilight, stood this cherry tree before us. It had no leaves, but
was one white mass of blossom.

In the evening Detering was not to be seen. Then at last he came back
and had a couple of branches of cherry blossom in his hand. We made fun
of him, and asked whether he was going to a wedding. He made no answer,

but laid them on his bed. During the night I heard him making a noise, he
seemed to be packing. I sensed something amiss and went over to him. He
made out it was nothing, and I said to him: "Don't do anything silly,
Detering."

"Ach, why—it's merely that I can't sleep——"

"What did you pick the cherry branches for?"

"I might have been going to get some more cherry branches," he replied,
evasively—and after a while: "I have a big orchard with cherry trees at
home. When they are in blossom, from the hay loft they look like one single
sheet, so white. It is just the time."

"Perhaps you will get leave soon. You may even be sent back as a
farmer."

He nodded, but he was far away. When these peasants are excited they
have a curious expression, a mixture of cow and yearning god, half stupid
and half rapt. In order to turn him away from his thoughts I asked him for a
piece of bread. He gave it to me without a murmur. That was suspicious, for
he is usually tight-fisted. So I stayed awake. Nothing happened; in the
morning he was as usual.

Apparently he had noticed that I had been watching him;—but the
second morning after he was gone. I noticed it, but said nothing, in order to
give him time; he might perhaps get through. Various fellows have already
got into Holland.

But at roll call he was missed. A week after we heard that he had been
caught by the field gendarmes, those despicable military police. He had
headed toward Germany, that was hopeless, of course—and, of course, he
did everything else just as idiotically. Anyone might have known that his
flight was only home-sickness and a momentary aberration. But what does
a court martial hundreds of miles behind the front-line know about it? We
have heard nothing more of Detering.

* *

But sometimes it broke out in other ways, this danger, these pent-up
things, as from an overheated boiler. It will be enough to tell how Berger
met his end.

Our trenches have now for some time been shot to pieces, and we have
an elastic line, so that there is practically no longer any proper trench
warfare. When attack and counter-attack have waged backwards and
forwards there remains a broken line and a bitter struggle from crater to
crater. The front line has been penetrated, and everywhere small groups
have established themselves, the fight is carried on from clusters of shell-
holes.

We are in a crater, the English are coming down obliquely, they are
turning our flank and working in behind us. We are surrounded. It is not
easy to surrender, fog and smoke hang over us, no one would recognize that
we wanted to give ourselves up, and perhaps we don't want to, a man
doesn't even know himself at such moments. We hear the explosions of the
hand-grenades coming toward us. Our machine-gun sweeps over the
semicircle in front of us. The cooling-water evaporates, we hastily pass
round the case, every man pisses in it, and thus we again have water, and
are able to continue firing. But behind us the attack crashes ever nearer.

A few minutes and we are lost.

Then, at closest range, a second machine-gun bursts out. It is set up in a
crater alongside us; Berger has fetched it, and now the counter-attack comes
over from behind; we are set free and make contact with the rear.

Afterwards, as we lie in comparatively good cover, one of the food-
carriers reports that a couple of hundred yards distant there lies a wounded
messenger-dog.

"Where?" asks Berger.

The other describes the place to him. Berger goes off either to fetch the
beast in or to shoot it. Six months ago he would not have cared, he would
have been reasonable. We try to prevent him. Then, as he goes off grimly,
all we can say is: "You're mad," and let him go. For these cases of front-line

madness become dangerous if one is not able to fling the man to the ground
and hold him fast. And Berger is six feet and the most powerful man in the
company.

He is absolutely mad for he has to pass through the barrage; but this
lightning that lowers somewhere above us all has struck him and made him
demented. It affects others so that they begin to rave, to run away—there
was one man who even tried to dig himself into the ground with hands, feet,
and teeth.

It is true, such things are often simulated, but the pretence itself is a
symptom. Berger, who means to finish off the dog, is carried off with a
wound in the pelvis, and one of the fellows who carry him gets a bullet in
the cheek while doing it.

* *

Müller is dead. Someone shot him point blank with a Verey light in the
stomach. He lived for half an hour, quite conscious, and in terrible pain.

Before he died he handed over his pocketbook to me, and bequeathed
me his boots—the same that he once inherited from Kemmerich. I wear
them, for they fit me quite well. After me Tjaden will get them, I have
promised them to him.

We have been able to bury Müller, but he is not likely to remain long
undisturbed. Our lines are falling back. There are too many fresh English
and American regiments over there. There's too much corned beef and
white wheaten bread. Too many new guns. Too many aeroplanes.

But we are emaciated and starved. Our food is so bad and mixed up
with so much substitute stuff that it makes us ill. The factory owners in
Germany have grown wealthy;—dysentery dissolves our bowels. The
latrine poles are always densely crowded; the people at home ought to be
shown these grey, yellow, miserable, wasted faces here, these bent figures
from whose bodies the colic wrings out the blood, and who with lips
trembling and distorted with pain, grin at one another and say: "It is not
much sense pulling up one's trousers again——"

Our artillery is fired out, it has too few shells and the barrels are so
worn that they shoot uncertainly, and scatter so widely as even to fall on
ourselves. We have too few horses. Our fresh troops are anaemic boys in
need of rest, who cannot carry a pack, but merely know how to die. By
thousands. They understand nothing about warfare, they simply go on and
let themselves be shot down. A single flyer routed two companies of them
for a joke, just as they came fresh from the train—before they had ever
heard of such a thing as cover.

"Germany ought to be empty soon," says Kat.

We have given up hope that some day an end may come. We never think
so far. A man can stop a bullet and be killed; he can get wounded, and then
the hospital is his next stop. There, if they do not amputate him, he sooner
or later falls into the hands of one of those staff surgeons who, with the War
Service Cross in his button-hole, says to him: "What, one leg a bit short? If
you have any pluck you don't need to run at the front. The man is A1.
Dismiss!"

Kat tells a story that has travelled the whole length of the front from the
Vosges to Flanders;—of the staff surgeon who reads the names on the list,
and when a man comes before him, without looking up, says: "A1. We need
soldiers up there." A fellow with a wooden leg comes up before him, the
staff surgeon again says A1—— "And then," Kat raises his voice, "the
fellow says to him: 'I already have a wooden leg, but when I go back again
and they shoot off my head, then I will get a wooden head made and
become a staff surgeon." This answer tickles us all immensely.

There may be good doctors, and there are, lots of them; all the same,
every soldier some time during his hundreds of inspections falls into the
clutches of one of these countless hero-grabbers who pride themselves on
changing as many C3's and B3's as possible into A1's.

There are many such stories, they are mostly far more bitter. All the
same, they have nothing to do with mutiny or lead-swinging. They are
merely honest and call a thing by its name; for there is a very great deal of
fraud, injustice, and baseness in the army.—Is it nothing that regiment after

regiment returns again and again to the ever more hopeless struggle, that
attack follows attack along the weakening, retreating, crumbling line?

From a mockery the tanks have become a terrible weapon. Armoured
they come rolling on in long lines, and more than anything else embody for
us the horror of war.

We do not see the guns that bombard us; the attacking lines of the
enemy infantry are men like ourselves; but these tanks are machines, their
caterpillars run on as endless as the war, they are annihilation, they roll
without feeling into the craters, and climb up again without stopping, a fleet
of roaring, smoke-belching armour-clads, invulnerable steel beasts
squashing the dead and the wounded—we shrivel up in our thin skin before
them, against their colossal weight our arms are sticks of straw, and our
hand-grenades matches.

Shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks—shattering, starvation, death.

Dysentery, influenza, typhus—murder, burning, death.

Trenches, hospitals, the common grave—there are no other possibilities.

* *

In one attack our Company Commander, Bertinck, falls. He was one of
those superb front-line officers who are foremost in every hot place. He was
with us for two years without being wounded, so that something had to
happen in the end.

We occupy a crater and get surrounded. The stink of petroleum or oil
blows across with the fumes of powder. Two fellows with a flame-thrower
are seen, one carries the tin on his back, the other has the hose in his hands
from which the fire spouts. If they get so near that they can reach us we are
done for, we cannot retreat yet.

We open fire on them. But they work nearer and things begin to look
bad. Bertinck is lying in the hole with us. When he sees that we cannot
escape because under the sharp fire we must make the most of this cover, he

takes a rifle, crawls out of the hole, and lying down propped on his elbows,
he takes aim. He fires—the same moment a bullet smacks into him, they
have got him. Still he lies and aims again;—once he shifts and again takes
his aim; at last the rifle cracks. Bertinck lets the gun drop and says: "Good,"
and slips back into the hole. The hindermost of the two flame-throwers is
hit, he falls, the hose slips away from the other fellow, the fire squirts about
on all sides and the man burns.

Bertinck has a chest wound. After a while a fragment smashes away his
chin, and the same fragment has sufficient force to tear open Leer's hip.
Leer groans as he supports himself on his arm, he bleeds quickly, no one
can help him. Like an emptying tube, after a couple of minutes he collapses.

What use is it to him now that he was such a good mathematician at
school.

* *

The months pass by. The summer of 1918 is the most bloody and the
most terrible. The days stand like angels in gold and blue,
incomprehensible, above the ring of annihilation. Every man here knows
that we are losing the war. Not much is said about it, we are falling back,
we will not be able to attack again after this big offensive, we have no more
men and no more ammunition.

Still the campaign goes on—the dying goes on——

Summer of 1918—Never has life in its niggardliness seemed to us so
desirable as now;—the red poppies in the meadows round our billets, the
smooth beetles on the blades of grass, the warm evenings in the cool, dim
rooms, the black, mysterious trees of the twilight, the stars and the flowing
waters, dreams and long sleep——. O Life, life, life!

Summer of 1918—Never was so much silently suffered as in the
moment when we depart once again for the front-line. Wild, tormenting
rumours of an armistice and peace are in the air, they lay hold on our hearts
and make the return to the front harder than ever.

Summer of 1918—Never was life in the line more bitter and more full
of horror than in the hours of the bombardment, when the blanched faces lie
in the dirt, and the hands clutch at the one thought: No! No! Not now! Not
now at the last moment!

Summer of 1918—Breath of hope that sweeps over the scorched fields,
raging fever of impatience, of disappointment, of the most agonizing terror
of death, insensate question: Why? Why do they not make an end? And why
do these rumours of an end fly about?

* *

There are so many airmen here, and they are so sure of themselves that
they give chase to single individuals, just as though they were hares. For
every one German plane there come at least five English and American. For
one hungry, wretched German soldier come five of the enemy, fresh and fit.
For one German army loaf there are fifty tins of canned beef over there. We
are not beaten, for as soldiers we are better and more experienced; we are
simply crushed and driven back by overwhelmingly superior forces.

Behind us lie rainy weeks—grey sky, grey fluid earth, grey dying. If we
go out, the rain at once soaks through our overcoat and clothing;—and we
remain wet all the time we are in the line. We never get dry. Those who still
wear high boots tie sand bags round the top so that the mud does not pour in
so fast. The rifles are caked, the uniforms caked, everything is fluid and
dissolved, the earth one dripping, soaked, oily mass in which lie the yellow
pools with red spiral streams of blood and into which the dead, wounded,
and survivors slowly sink down.

The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of
splinters whips forth the childlike cries of the wounded, and in the night
shattered life groans wearily to the silence.

Our hands are earth, our bodies clay and our eyes pools of rain. We do
not know whether we still live.

Then the heat sinks heavily into our shell holes like a jelly fish, moist
and oppressive, and on one of these late summer days, while bringing food,

Kat falls. We two are alone. I bind up his wound; his shin seems to be
smashed. It has got the bone, and Kat groans desperately: "At last—just at
the last——"

I comfort him. "Who knows how long the mess will go on yet! Now
you are saved——"

The wound begins to bleed fast. Kat cannot be left by himself while I
try to find a stretcher. Anyway, I don't know of a stretcher-bearer's post in
the neighbourhood.

Kat is not very heavy; so I take him up on my back and start off to the
dressing station with him.

Twice we rest. He suffers acutely on the way. We do not speak much. I
have opened the collar of my tunic and breathe heavily, I sweat and my face
is swollen with the strain of carrying. All the same I urge him to let us go
on, for the place is dangerous.

"Shall we go on again, Kat?"

"Must, Paul."

"Then come."

I raise him up, he stands on the uninjured leg and supports himself
against a tree. I take up the wounded leg carefully, then he gives a jump and
I take the knee of the sound leg also under my arm.

The going is more difficult. Often a shell whistles across. I go as
quickly as I can, for the blood from Kat's wound drips to the ground. We
cannot shelter ourselves properly from the explosions; before we can take
cover the danger is all over.

We lie down in a small shell hole to rest. I give Kat some tea from my
water bottle. We smoke a cigarette. "Well, Kat," I say gloomily, "We are
going to be separated at last."

He is silent and looks at me.

"Do you remember, Kat, how we commandeered the goose? And how
you brought me out of the barrage when I was still a young recruit and was
wounded for the first time? I cried then. Kat, that is almost three years ago."

He nods.

The anguish of solitude rises up in me. When Kat is taken away I will
not have one friend left.

"Kat, in any case we must see one another again, if it is peace time
before you come back."

"Do you think that I will be marked A1 again with this leg?" he asks
bitterly.

"With rest it will get better. The joint is all right. It may limp a bit."

"Give me another cigarette," he says.

"Perhaps we could do something together later on, Kat." I am very
miserable, it is impossible that Kat—Kat my friend, Kat with the drooping
shoulders and the poor, thin moustache, Kat, whom I know as I know no
other man, Kat with whom I have shared these years—it is impossible that
perhaps I shall not see Kat again.

"In any case give me your address at home, Kat. And here is mine, I will
write it down for you."

I write his address in my pocket book. How forlorn I am already, though
he still sits here beside me. Couldn't I shoot myself quickly in the foot so as
to be able to go with him.

Suddenly Kat gurgles and turns green and yellow. "Let us go on," he
stammers.

I jump up, eager to help him, I take him up and start off at a run, a slow
steady pace, so as not to jolt his leg too much.

My throat is parched; everything dances red and black before my eyes, I
stagger on doggedly and pitilessly and at last reach the dressing station.

There I drop down on my knees, but have still enough strength to fall on
to the side where Kat's sound leg is. After a few minutes I straighten myself
up again. My legs and my hands tremble. I have trouble in finding my water
bottle, to take a pull. My lips tremble as I try to drink. But I smile—Kat is
saved.

After a while I begin to sort out the confusion of voices that falls on my
ears.

"You might have spared yourself that," says an orderly.

I look at him without comprehending.

He points to Kat. "He is stone dead."

I do not understand him. "He has been hit in the shin," I say.

The orderly stands still. "That as well."

I turn round. My eyes are still dulled, the sweat breaks out on me again,
it runs over my eyelids. I wipe it away and peer at Kat. He lies still.
"Fainted," I say quickly.

The orderly whistles softly. "I know better than that. He is dead. I'll lay
any money on that."

I shake my head: "Not possible. Only ten minutes ago I was talking to
him. He has fainted."

Kat's hands are warm, I pass my arm under his shoulders in order to rub
his temples with some tea. I feel my fingers become moist. As I draw them
away from behind his head, they are bloody. "You see——" The orderly
whistles once more through his teeth.

On the way without my having noticed it, Kat has caught a splinter in
the head. There is just one little hole, it must have been a very tiny, stray

splinter. But it has sufficed. Kat is dead.

Slowly I get up.

"Would you like to take his pay book and his things?" the lance-corporal
asks me.

I nod, and he gives them to me.

The orderly is mystified. "You are not related, are you?"

No, we are not related. No, we are not related.

Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and
turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is
as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died.

Then I know nothing more.

CHAPTER XII

It is autumn. There are not many of the old hands left. I am the last of
the seven fellows from our class.

Everyone talks of peace and armistice. All wait. If it again proves an
illusion, then they will break up; hope is high, it cannot be taken away again
without an upheaval. If there is not peace, then there will be revolution.

I have fourteen days rest, because I have swallowed a bit of gas; in a
little garden I sit the whole day long in the sun. The armistice is coming
soon, I believe it now too. Then we will go home.

Here my thoughts stop and will not go any farther. All that meets me, all
that floods over me are but feelings—greed of life, love of home, yearning

of the blood, intoxication of deliverance. But no aims.

Had we returned home in 1916, out of the suffering and the strength of
our experiences we might have unleashed a storm. Now if we go back we
will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope. We will not be
able to find our way any more.

And men will not understand us—for the generation that grew up before
us, though it has passed these years with us here, already had a home and a
calling; now it will return to its old occupations, and the war will be
forgotten—and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to
us and push us aside. We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will
grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit,
and most will be bewildered;—the years will pass by and in the end we
shall fall into ruin.

But perhaps all this that I think is mere melancholy and dismay, which
will fly away as the dust, when I stand once again beneath the poplars and
listen to the rustling of their leaves. It cannot be that it has gone, the
yearning that made our blood unquiet, the unknown, the perplexing, the
oncoming things, the thousand faces of the future, the melodies from
dreams and from books, the whispers and divinations of women, it cannot
be that this has vanished in bombardment, in despair, in brothels.

Here the trees show gay and golden, the berries of the rowan stand red
among the leaves, country roads run white out to the sky line, and the
canteens hum like beehives with rumours of peace.

I stand up.

I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they bring me nothing
more, they can bring me nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope
that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through
these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I
know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of
the will that is within me.

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the
whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All
quiet on the Western Front.

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning
him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an
expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD.

TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALL QUIET ON
THE WESTERN FRONT ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be
renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law
means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the
Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States
without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying
and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a
registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook,
except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying
royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge
anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg
eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do
practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by
U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license,
especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any
other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you
agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License
available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing
Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work,
you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the
terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright)
agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement,
you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy
of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to
be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on
or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can
do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying
with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a
lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you
follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to
Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual
work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are
removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing
Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for
keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can
easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you
share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a
constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the
laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before
downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating
derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work.
The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status
of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied
or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with
this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in
the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country
where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from
texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice
indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the
work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without
paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a
work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on
the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs
1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the
permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply
with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed
by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project
Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the
copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License
terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any
other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently
displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or
immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the
official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no
additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of
exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work
in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format
must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph
1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing,
copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply
with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to
or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the
use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the
owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate
royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days
following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to
prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly
marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about
donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does
not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You
must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works
possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all
access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in
this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project

Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works
not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and
the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as,
but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription
errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that
damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except
for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to
you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE
THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT
EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE
THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you
discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you
can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund.
If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to

you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work
electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you
may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR
FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or
limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable
to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum
disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity
or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause
to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg
work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project
Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic
works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including
obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the

efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of
life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance
they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring
that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for
generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for
Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations
can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)
(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of
Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service.
The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541.
Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s
laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and
official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the
number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment

including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are
particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States.
Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort,
much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these
requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not
received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or
determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have
not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against
accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us
with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any
statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the
United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods
and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including
checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg
electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with
anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg
eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions,
all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a

copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in
compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility:
www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how
to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email
newsletter to hear about new eBooks.