All quiet on the Western Front
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