All quiet on the Western Front
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