All quiet on the Western Front
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