All quiet on the Western Front
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