All quiet on the Western Front
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,