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Title: All quiet on the Western Front
Author: Erich Maria Remarque
Translator: A. W. Wheen
Release date: January 1, 2025 [eBook #75011]
Language: English
Original publication: London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1929
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT ***
ERICH MARIA REMARQUE
ALL QUIET
ON THE WESTERN
FRONT
_Translated from the German by
A. W. WHEEN_
LONDON
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
IM WESTEN NICHTS NEUES _first published_
_in Germany January_ 1929
_First published in England March_ 1929
_Reprinted April_ 1929
_Reprinted April_ 1929
_Reprinted April_ 1929
_Reprinted April_ 1929
_Reprinted April_ 1929
_Reprinted April_ 1929
_Reprinted April_ 1929
_Reprinted April_ 1929
_Reprinted May_ 1929
_Reprinted May_ 1929
_Reprinted May_ 1929
_Reprinted June_ 1929
_Reprinted June_ 1929
_Completing_ 90,000
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
CHISWICK PRESS; CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least
of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand
face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of
men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed
by the war.
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
CHAPTER I
We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were
relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans. We
are satisfied and at peace. Each man has another mess-tin full for
the evening; and, what is more, there is a double ration of sausage
and bread. That puts a man in fine trim. We have not had such luck
as this for a long time. The cook with his carroty head is begging
us to eat; he beckons with his ladle to every one that passes, and
spoons him out a great dollop. He does not see how he can empty his
stew-pot in time for coffee. Tjaden and Müller have produced two
wash-basins and had them filled up to the brim as a reserve. In
Tjaden this is voracity, in Müller it is foresight. Where Tjaden
puts it all is a mystery, for he is and always will be as thin as a
rake.
What's more important still is the issue of a double ration of
smokes. Ten cigars, twenty cigarettes, and two quids of chew per
man; now that is decent. I have exchanged my chewing tobacco with
Katczinsky for his cigarettes, which means I have forty altogether.
That's enough for a day.
It is true we have no right to this windfall. The Prussian is not so
generous. We have only a miscalculation to thank for it.
Fourteen days ago we had to go up and relieve the front line. It was
fairly quiet on our sector, so the quartermaster who remained in the
rear had requisitioned the usual quantity of rations and provided for
the full company of one hundred and fifty men. But on the last day
an astonishing number of English field-guns opened up on us with
high-explosive, drumming ceaselessly on our position, so that we
suffered heavily and came back only eighty strong.
Last night we moved back and settled down to get a good sleep for
once: Katczinsky is right when he says it would not be such a bad war
if only one could get a little more sleep. In the line we have had
next to none, and fourteen days is a long time at one stretch.
It was noon before the first of us crawled out of our quarters. Half
an hour later every man had his mess-tin and we gathered at the
cook-house, which smelt greasy and nourishing. At the head of the
queue of course were the hungriest--little Albert Kropp, the clearest
thinker among us and therefore the first to be lance-corporal;
Müller, who still carries his school textbooks with him, dreams of
examinations, and during a bombardment mutters propositions in
physics; Leer, who wears a full beard and has a preference for the
girls from officers' brothels. He swears that they are obliged by an
army order to wear silk chemises and to bathe before entertaining
guests of the rank of major and upwards. And as the fourth, myself,
Paul Bäumer. All four are nineteen years of age, and all four joined
up from the same class as volunteers for the war.
Close behind us were our friends: Tjaden, a skinny lock-smith of our
own age, the biggest eater of the company. He sits down to eat as
thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the family way;
Haie Westhus, of the same age, a peat-digger, who can easily hold a
ration-loaf in his hand and say: Guess what I've got in my fist; then
Detering, a peasant, who thinks of nothing but his farm-yard and his
wife; and finally Stanislaus Katczinsky, the leader of our group,
shrewd, cunning, and hard-bitten, forty years of age, with a face of
the soil, blue eyes, bent shoulders, and a remarkable nose for dirty
weather, good food, and soft jobs.
Our gang formed the head of the queue before the cook-house. We were
growing impatient, for the cook paid no attention to us.
Finally Katczinsky called out to him: "Say, Heinrich, open up the
soup-kitchen. Anyone can see the beans are done."
He shook his head sleepily: "You must all be there first." Tjaden
grinned: "We are all here."
The sergeant-cook still took no notice. "That may do for you," he
said. "But where are the others?"
"They won't be fed by you to-day. They're either in the
dressing-station or pushing up daisies."
The cook was quite disconcerted as the facts dawned on him. He was
staggered. "And I have cooked for one hundred and fifty men----"
Kropp poked him in the ribs. "Then for once we'll have enough. Come
on, begin!"
Suddenly a vision came over Tjaden. His sharp, mousey features began
to shine, his eyes grew small with cunning, his jaws twitched, and he
whispered hoarsely: "Man! then you've got bread for one hundred and
fifty men too, eh?"
The sergeant-cook nodded absent-minded, and bewildered.
Tjaden seized him by the tunic. "And sausage?"
Ginger nodded again.
Tjaden's chaps quivered. "Tobacco too?"
"Yes, everything."
Tjaden beamed: "What a bean-feast! That's all for us! Each man
gets--wait a bit--yes, practically two issues."
Then Ginger stirred himself and said: "That won't do."
Then we got excited and began to crowd around.
"Why won't that do, you old carrot?" demanded Katczinsky.
"Eighty men can't have what is meant for a hundred and fifty."
"We'll soon show you," growled Müller.
"I don't care about the stew, but I can only issue rations for eighty
men," persisted Ginger.
Katczinsky got angry. "You might be generous for once. You haven't
drawn food for eighty men. You've drawn it for the Second Company.
Good. Let's have it then. We are the Second Company."
We began to jostle the fellow. No one felt kindly toward him, for it
was his fault that the food twice came up to us in the line too late
and cold. Under shell-fire he wouldn't bring his kitchen up near
enough, so that our soup-carriers had to go much farther than those
of the other companies. Now Bulcke of the First Company is a much
better fellow. He is as fat as a hamster in winter, but he trundles
his pots when it comes to that right up to the very front line.
We were in just the right mood, and there would certainly have been a
dust-up if our company commander had not appeared. He informed
himself of the dispute, and only remarked: "Yes, we did have heavy
losses yesterday."
He looked in the dixie. "The beans look good."
Ginger nodded. "Cooked with meat and fat."
The lieutenant looked at us. He knew what we were thinking. And he
knew many other things too, because he came to the company as a
non-com. and was promoted from the ranks. He lifted the lid from the
dixie again and sniffed. Then passing on he said: "Serve out the
whole issue. We can do with it. And bring me a plate full too."
Ginger looked sheepish as Tjaden danced round him.
"It doesn't cost you anything! One would think the quartermaster's
store belonged to him! And now get on with it, you old
blubber-sticker, and don't you miscount either."
"You be hanged!" spat out Ginger. When things get beyond him he
throws up the sponge altogether; he just goes to pieces. And as if
to show that all things were now the same to him, of his own free
will he shared out half a pound of synthetic honey equally among us.
To-day is wonderfully good. The mail has come, and almost every man
has a couple of letters and papers. We stroll over to the meadow
behind the billets. Kropp has the round lid of a margarine tub under
his arm.
On the right side of the meadow a large common latrine has been
built, a well-planned and durable construction. But that is for
recruits who as yet have not learned how to make the most of whatever
comes their way. We look for something better. Scattered about
everywhere there are separate, individual boxes for the same purpose.
They are square, neat boxes with wooden sides all round, and have
unimpeachably satisfactory seats. On the sides are hand-grips
enabling one to shift them about. We move three together in a ring
and sit down comfortably. For two hours we have been here without
getting up.
I well remember how embarrassed we were as recruits in barracks when
we had to use the general latrine. There were no doors and twenty
men sat side by side as in a railway carriage, so that they could be
reviewed all at one glance, for soldiers must always be under
supervision.
Since then we have learned better than to be shy about such trifling
immodesties. In time things far worse than that came easy to us.
Here in the open air though, the business is entirely a pleasure. I
no longer understand why we should always have shied at it before.
It is, in fact, just as natural as eating and drinking. We did not
properly appreciate these boxes when we first enlisted; they were new
to us and did not fill such an important rôle--but now they have long
been a matter of course.
The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach
and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from
these regions, and they give an intimate flavour to expressions of
his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignation. It is
impossible to express oneself in any other way so clearly and
pithily. Our families and our teachers will be shocked when we go
home, but here it is the universal language.
Enforced publicity has in our eyes restored the character of complete
innocence to all these things. More than that, they are so much a
matter of course that their comfortable performance is fully as much
enjoyed as the playing of a safe top running flush. Not for nothing
was the word "latrine-rumour" invented; these places are the
regimental gossip-shops and common-rooms.
We feel ourselves for the time being better off than in any palatial
white-tiled "convenience." _There_ it can only be hygienic; _here_
it is beautiful.
These are wonderfully care-free hours. Over us is the blue sky. On
the horizon float the bright yellow, sunlit observation-balloons, and
the many little white clouds of the anti-aircraft shells. Often they
rise in a sheaf as they follow after an airman. We hear the muffled
rumble of the front only as very distant thunder, bumble-bees droning
by quite drown it. Around us stretches the flowery meadow. The
grasses sway their tall spears; the white butterflies flutter around
and float on the soft warm wind of the late summer. We read letters
and newspapers and smoke. We take off our caps and lay them down
beside us. The wind plays with our hair; it plays with our words and
thoughts. The three boxes stand in the midst of the glowing, red
field-poppies.
We set the lid of the margarine tub on our knees and so have a good
table for a game of skat. Kropp has the cards with him. After every
throw-in the loser pays into the pool. One could sit like this for
ever.
The notes of an accordion float across from the billets. Often we
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
of parents is at its weakest and girls have not yet got a hold over
us. Besides this there was little else--some enthusiasm, a few
hobbies, and our school. Beyond this our life did not extend. And
of this nothing remains.
Kantorek would say that we stood on the threshold of life. And so it
would seem. We had as yet taken no root. The war swept us away.
For the others, the older men, it is but an interruption. They are
able to think beyond it. We, however, have been gripped by it and do
not know what the end may be. We know only that in some strange and
melancholy way we have become a waste land. All the same, we are not
often sad.
* *
Though Müller would be delighted to have Kemmerich's boots, he is
really quite as sympathetic as another who could not bear to think of
such a thing for grief. He merely sees things clearly. Were
Kemmerich able to make any use of the boots, then Müller would rather
go barefoot over barbed wire than scheme how to get hold of them.
But as it is the boots are quite inappropriate to Kemmerich's
circumstances, whereas Müller can make good use of them. Kemmerich
will die; it is immaterial who gets them. Why, then, should Müller
not succeed to them? he has more right than a hospital orderly. When
Kemmerich is dead it will be too late. Therefore Müller is already
on the watch.
We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are
artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us. And good
boots are scarce.
* *
Once it was different. When we went to the district-commandant to
enlist, we were a class of twenty young men, many of whom proudly
shaved for the first time before going to the barracks. We had no
definite plans for our future. Our thoughts of a career and
occupation were as yet of too unpractical a character to furnish any
scheme of life. We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave
to life, and to the war also, an ideal and almost romantic character.
We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more
profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a
bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer. At
first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent, we
recognized that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not
intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill. We became
soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything
to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer
incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more
authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and
the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe. With our young,
awakened eyes we saw that the classical conception of the Fatherland
held by our teachers resolved itself here into a renunciation of
personality such as one would not ask of the meanest
servant--salutes, springing to attention, parade-marches, presenting
arms, right wheel, left wheel, clicking the heels, insults, and a
thousand pettifogging details. We had fancied our task would be
different, only to find we were to be trained for heroism as though
we were circus-ponies. But we soon accustomed ourselves to it. We
learned in fact that some part of these things was necessary, but the
rest merely show. Soldiers have a fine nose for such distinctions.
* *
By threes and fours our class was scattered over the platoons amongst
Frisian fishermen, peasants, and labourers with whom we soon made
friends. Kropp, Müller, Kemmerich, and I went to No. 9 platoon under
Corporal Himmelstoss.
He had the reputation of being the strictest disciplinarian in the
camp, and was proud of it. He was a small undersized fellow with a
foxy, waxed moustache, who had seen twelve years service and was in
civil life a postman. He had a special dislike for Kropp, Tjaden,
Westhus, and me, because he sensed a quiet defiance.
I have remade his bed fourteen times in one morning. Each time he
had some fault to find and pulled it to pieces. I have kneaded a
pair of prehistoric boots that were as hard as iron for twenty
hours--with intervals of course--until they became as soft as butter
and not even Himmelstoss could find anything more to do to them;
under his orders I have scrubbed out the Corporals' Mess with a
tooth-brush. Kropp and I were given the job of clearing the
barrack-square of snow with a hand-broom and a dust-pan, and we would
have gone on till we were frozen had not a lieutenant accidentally
appeared who sent us off, and hauled Himmelstoss over the coals. But
the only result of this was to make Himmelstoss hate us more. For
six weeks consecutively I did guard every Sunday and was hut-orderly
for the same length of time. With full pack and rifle I have had to
practise on a soft, wet, newly ploughed field the "Prepare to
advance, advance!" and the "Lie down!" until I was one lump of mud
and finally collapsed. Four hours later I had to report to
Himmelstoss with my clothes scrubbed clean, my hands chafed and
bleeding. Together with Kropp, Westhus, and Tjaden I have stood at
attention in a hard frost without gloves for a quarter of an hour at
a stretch, while Himmelstoss watched for the slightest movement of
our bare fingers on the steel barrel of the rifle. I have run eight
times from the top floor of the barracks down to the courtyard in my
shirt at two o'clock in the morning because my drawers projected
three inches beyond the edge of the stool on which one had to stack
all one's things. Alongside me ran the corporal, Himmelstoss, and
trod on my bare toes. At bayonet-practice I had constantly to fight
with Himmelstoss, I with a heavy iron weapon whilst he had a handy
wooden one with which he easily struck my arms till they were black
and blue. Once, indeed, I became so infuriated that I ran at him
blindly and gave him a mighty jab in the stomach and knocked him
down. When he reported me the company commander laughed at him and
told him he ought to keep his eyes open; he understood Himmelstoss,
and apparently was not displeased at his discomfiture. I became a
past master on the parallel bars and strove to surpass my instructor
at physical jerks;--we have trembled at the mere sound of his voice,
but this runaway post-horse never got the better of us.
One Sunday as Kropp and I were lugging a latrine-bucket on a pole
across the barrack-yard, Himmelstoss came by, all polished up and
spry for going out. He planted himself in front of us and asked how
we liked the job. In spite of ourselves we tripped and emptied the
bucket over his legs. He raved, but the limit had been reached.
"That means clink," he yelled.
But Kropp had had enough. "There'll be an inquiry first," he said,
"and then we'll unload."
"Mind how you speak to a non-commissioned officer!" bawled
Himmelstoss. "Have you lost your senses? You wait till you're
spoken to. What will you do, anyway?"
"Show you up, Corporal," said Kropp, his thumbs in line with the
seams of his trousers.
Himmelstoss saw what we meant and went off without saying a word.
But before he disappeared he growled: "You'll drink this!"--but it
was the end of his authority. He tried it on once more in the
ploughed field with his "Prepare to advance, advance" and "Lie down."
We obeyed each order, since an order's an order and has to be obeyed.
But we did it so slowly that Himmelstoss became desperate. Carefully
we went down on our knees, then on our hands, and so on; in the
meantime, quite infuriated, he had given another command. But before
we had even begun to sweat he was hoarse. After that he left us in
peace. He did indeed always refer to us as swine, but there was,
nevertheless, a certain respect in his tone.
There were many other staff corporals, the majority of whom were more
decent. But above all each of them wanted to keep his good job there
at home as long as possible, and that he could do only by being
strict with the recruits.
Practically every conceivable polishing job in the entire camp fell
to us and we often howled with rage. Many of us became ill through
it; Wolf actually died of inflammation of the lung. But we would
have felt ridiculous had we hauled down our colours. We became hard,
suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough--and that was good; for these
attributes had been entirely lacking in us. Had we gone into the
trenches without this period of training most of us would certainly
have gone mad. Only thus were we prepared for what awaited us. We
did not break down, but endured; our twenty years, which made many
another thing so grievous, helped us in this. But by far the most
important was that it awakened in us a strong, practical sense of
_esprit de corps_, which in the field developed into the finest thing
that arose out of the war--comradeship.
* *
I sit by Kemmerich's bed. He is sinking steadily. Around us is a
great commotion. A hospital train has arrived and the wounded fit to
be moved are being selected. The doctor passes by Kemmerich's bed
without once looking at him.
"Next time, Franz," I say.
He raises himself on the pillow with his elbows. "They have
amputated my leg."
He knows it too then. I nod and answer: "You must be thankful you've
come off with that."
He is silent.
I resume: "It might have been both legs, Franz. Wegeler has lost his
right arm. That's much worse. Besides, you will be going home." He
looks at me. "Do you think so?"
"Of course."
"Do you think so?" he repeats.
"Sure, Franz. Once you've got over the operation."
He beckons me to bend down. I stoop over him and he whispers: "I
don't think so."
"Don't talk rubbish, Franz, in a couple of days you'll see for
yourself. What is it anyway--an amputated leg? here they patch up
far worse things than that."
He lifts one hand. "Look here though, these fingers."
"That's the result of the operation. Just eat decently and you'll
soon be well again. Do they look after you properly?"
He points to a dish that is still half full. I get excited. "Franz,
you must eat. Eating is the main thing. That looks good too."
He turns away. After a pause he says slowly: "I wanted to become a
head-forester once."
"So you may still," I assure him. "There are splendid artificial
limbs now, you'd hardly know there was anything missing. They are
fixed on to the muscles. You can move the fingers and work and even
write with an artificial hand. And besides, they will always be
making new improvements."
For a while he lies still. Then he says: "You can take my lace-up
boots with you for Müller."
I nod and wonder what to say to encourage him. His lips have fallen
away, his mouth has become larger, his teeth stick out and look as
though they were made of chalk. The flesh melts, the forehead bulges
more prominently, the cheek-bones protrude. The skeleton is working
itself through. The eyes are already sunken in. In a couple of
hours it will be over.
He is not the first that I have seen thus; but we grew up together
and that always makes it a bit different. I have copied his essays.
At school he used to wear a brown coat with a belt and shiny sleeves.
He was the only one of us, too, who could do the giant's turn on the
horizontal bar. His hair flew in his face like silk when he did it.
Kantorek was proud of him for it. But he couldn't endure cigarettes.
His skin was very white; he had something of the girl about him.
I glance at my boots. They are big and clumsy, the breeches are
tucked into them, and standing up one looks well-built and powerful
in these great drain-pipes. But when we go bathing and strip,
suddenly we have slender legs again and slight shoulders. We are no
longer soldiers but little more than boys; no one would believe that
we could carry packs. It is a strange moment when we stand naked;
then we become civilians, and almost feel ourselves to be so. When
bathing Franz Kemmerich looked as slight and frail as a child. There
he lies now--but why? The whole world ought to pass by this bed and
say: "That is Franz Kemmerich, nineteen and a half years old, he
doesn't want to die. Let him not die!"
My thoughts become confused. This atmosphere of carbolic and
gangrene clogs the lungs, it is a thick gruel, it suffocates.
It grows dark. Kemmerich's face changes colour, it lifts from the
pillow and is so pale that it gleams. The mouth moves slightly. I
draw near to him. He whispers: "If you find my watch, send it
home----"
I do not reply. It is no use any more. No one can console him. I
am wretched with helplessness. This forehead with its hollow
temples, this mouth that is now merely a slit, this sharp nose! And
the fat, weeping woman at home to whom I must write. If only the
letter were sent off already!
Hospital-orderlies go to and fro with bottles and pails. One of them
comes up, casts a glance at Kemmerich and goes away again. You can
see he is waiting, apparently he wants the bed.
I bend over Franz and talk to him as though that could save him:
"Perhaps you will go to the convalescent home at Klosterberg, among
the villas, Franz. Then you can look out from the window across the
fields to the two trees on the horizon. It is the loveliest time of
the year now, when the corn ripens; at evening the fields in the
sunlight look like mother-of-pearl. And the lane of poplars by the
Klosterbach, where we used to catch sticklebacks! You can build an
aquarium again and keep fish in it, and you can go out without asking
anyone, you can even play the piano if you want to."
I lean down over his face which lies in the shadow. He still
breathes, lightly. His face is wet, he is crying. What a fine mess
I have made of it with my foolish talk!
"But Franz"--I put my arm round his shoulder and put my face against
his. "Will you sleep now?"
He does not answer. The tears run down his cheeks. I would like to
wipe them away but my handkerchief is too dirty.
An hour passes. I sit tensely and watch his every movement in case
he may perhaps say something. What if he were to open his mouth and
cry out! But he only weeps, his head turned aside. He does not
speak of his mother or his brothers and sisters. He says nothing;
all that lies behind him; he is entirely alone now with his little
life of nineteen years, and cries because it leaves him. This is the
most disturbing and hardest parting that ever I have seen, although
it was pretty bad too with Tiedjen, who called for his mother--a big
bear of a fellow who, with wild eyes full of terror, held off the
doctor from his bed with a dagger until he collapsed.
Suddenly Kemmerich groans and begins to gurgle.
I jump up, stumble outside and demand:
"Where is the doctor? Where is the doctor?"
As I catch sight of the white apron I seize hold of it: "Come quick,
Franz Kemmerich is dying."
He frees himself and asks an orderly standing by: "Which will that
be?"
He says: "Bed 26, amputated thigh."
He sniffs: "How should I know anything about it, I've amputated five
legs to-day"; he shoves me away, says to the hospital-orderly "You
see to it," and runs off to the operating room.
I tremble with rage as I go along with the orderly. The man looks at
me and says: "One operation after another since five o'clock this
morning. You know to-day alone there have been sixteen deaths--yours
is the seventeenth. There will probably be twenty altogether----"
I become faint, all at once I cannot do any more. I won't revile any
more, it is senseless, I could drop down and never rise up again.
We are by Kemmerich's bed. He is dead. The face is still wet from
the tears. The eyes are half open and yellow like old horn buttons.
The orderly pokes me in the ribs. "Are you taking his things with
you?" I nod.
He goes on: "We must take him away at once, we want the bed. Outside
they are lying on the floor."
I collect the things, untie Kemmerich's identification disc and take
it away. The orderly asks about the pay-book, I say that it is
probably in the orderly-room, and go. Behind me they are already
hauling Franz on to a water-proof sheet.
Outside the door I am aware of the darkness and the wind as a
deliverance. I breathe as deep as I can, and feel the breeze in my
face, warm and soft as never before. Thoughts of girls, of flowery
meadows, of white clouds suddenly come into my head. My feet begin
to move forward in my boots, I go quicker, I run. Soldiers pass by
me, I hear their voices without understanding. The earth is
streaming with forces which pour into me through the soles of my
feet. The night crackles electrically, the front thunders like a
concert of drums. My limbs move supply, I feel my joints strong, I
breathe the air deeply. The night lives, I live. I feel a hunger,
greater than comes from the belly alone.
Müller stands in front of the hut and waits for me. I give him the
boots. We go in and he tries them on. They fit well.
He roots among his supplies and offers me a fine piece of saveloy.
With it goes hot tea and rum.
CHAPTER III
Reinforcements have arrived. The vacancies have been filled and the
sacks of straw are already laid out in the huts. Some of them are
old hands, but there are twenty-five men of a later draft from the
base. They are about two years younger than us. Kropp nudges me:
"Seen the infants?"
I nod. We stick out our chests, shave in the open, shove our hands
in our pockets, inspect the recruits and feel ourselves to be
stone-age veterans.
Katczinsky joins us. We stroll past the horse-boxes and go over to
the reinforcements, who have already been issued with gas-masks and
coffee.
"Long time since you've had anything decent to eat, eh?" Kat asks one
of the youngsters.
He grimaces. "For breakfast, turnip-bread--lunch,
turnip-stew--supper, turnip-cutlets and turnip-salad." Kat gives a
knowing whistle.
"Bread made of turnips? You've been in luck, it's nothing new for it
to be made of sawdust. But what do you say to haricot beans? Have
some?"
The youngster turns red: "You can't kid me."
Katczinsky merely says: "Fetch your mess-tin."
We follow curiously. He takes us to a tub beside his straw sack. It
is nearly half full of a stew of beef and beans. Katczinsky plants
himself in front of it like a general and says:
"Sharp eyes and light fingers! That's what the Prussians say."
We are surprised. "Great guts, Kat, how did you come by that?" I ask
him.
"Ginger was glad I took it. I gave him three pieces of parachute
silk for it. Cold beans taste fine, too."
Grudgingly he gives the youngster a portion and says:
"Next time you come with your mess-tin have a cigar or a chew of
tobacco in your other hand. Get me?" Then he turns to us. "You get
off scot free, of course."
* *
Katczinsky never goes short; he has a sixth sense. There are such
people everywhere but one does not appreciate it at first. Every
company has one or two. Katczinsky is the smartest I know. By trade
he is a cobbler, I believe, but that hasn't anything to do with it;
he understands all trades. It's a good thing to be friends with him,
as Kropp and I are, and Haie Westhus too, more or less. But Haie is
rather the executive arm operating under Kat's orders when things
come to blows. For that he has his qualifications.
For example, we land at night in some entirely unknown spot, a sorry
hole, that has been eaten out to the very walls. We are quartered in
a small dark factory adapted to the purpose. There are beds in it,
or rather bunks--a couple of wooden beams over which wire netting is
stretched.
Wire netting is hard. And there's nothing to put on it. Our
waterproof sheets are too thin. We use our blankets to cover
ourselves.
Kat looks at the place and then says to Haie Westhus: "Come with me."
They go off to explore. Half an hour later they are back again with
arms full of straw. Kat has found a horse-box with straw in it. Now
we might sleep if we weren't so terribly hungry.
Kropp asks an artilleryman who has been some time in this
neighbourhood: "Is there a canteen anywhere abouts?"
"Is there a what?" he laughs. "There's nothing to be had here. You
won't find so much as a crust of bread here."
"Aren't there any inhabitants here at all then?"
He spits. "Yes, a couple. But they mostly loaf round the cook house
and beg."
"That's a bad business!--Then we'll have to pull in our belts and
wait till the rations come up in the morning."
But I see Kat has put on his cap.
"Where to, Kat?" I ask.
"Just to explore the place a bit." He strolls off. The artilleryman
grins scornfully. "Let him explore! But don't be too hopeful about
it."
Disappointed we lie down and consider whether we couldn't have a go
at the iron rations. But it's too risky; so we try to get a wink of
sleep.
Kropp divides a cigarette and hands me half. Tjaden gives an account
of his national dish--broad-beans and bacon. He despises it when not
flavoured with bog-myrtle, and, "for God's sake, let it all be cooked
together, not the potatoes, the beans, and the bacon separately."
Someone growls that he will pound Tjaden into bog-myrtle if he
doesn't shut up. Then all becomes quiet in the big room--only the
candles flickering from the necks of a couple of bottles and the
artilleryman spitting every now and then.
We stir a bit as the door opens and Kat appears. I think I must be
dreaming; he has two loaves of bread under his arm and a
blood-stained sandbag full of horse-flesh in his hand. The
artilleryman's pipe drops from his mouth. He feels the bread. "Real
bread, by God! and still hot too!"
Kat gives no explanation. He has the bread, the rest doesn't matter.
I'm sure that if he were planted down in the middle of the desert, in
half an hour he would have gathered together a supper of roast meat,
dates, and wine.
"Cut some wood," he says curtly to Haie.
Then he hauls out a frying-pan from under his coat, and a handful of
salt as well as a lump of fat from his pocket. He has thought of
everything. Haie makes a fire on the floor. It lights up the empty
room of the factory. We climb out of bed.
The artilleryman hesitates. He wonders whether to praise Kat and so
perhaps gain a little for himself. But Katczinsky doesn't even see
him, he might as well be thin air. He goes off cursing.
Kat knows the way to roast horse-flesh so that it's tender. It
shouldn't be put straight into the pan, that makes it tough. It
should be boiled first in a little water. With our knives we squat
round in a circle and fill our bellies.
That is Kat. If for but one hour in a year something eatable were to
be had in some one place only, within that hour, as if moved by a
vision, he would put on his cap, go out and walk directly there, as
though following a compass, and find it.
He finds everything--if it is cold, a small stove and wood, hay and
straw, a table and chairs--but above all food. It is uncanny; one
would think he conjured it out of the air. His masterpiece was four
boxes of lobsters. Admittedly we would rather have had a good beef
steak.
* *
We have settled ourselves on the sunny side of the hut. There is a
smell of tar, of summer, and of sweaty feet. Kat sits beside me. He
wants to talk. To-day we have been practising saluting because
Tjaden failed to salute a major. Kat can't get it out of his head.
"You see, we are losing the war because we can salute too well," he
says.
Kropp stalks up, with his breeches rolled up and his feet bare. He
lays out his washed socks to dry on the grass. Kat turns his eyes to
heaven, lets off a mighty fart, and says apologetically: "Every
little bean must be heard as well as seen."
The two begin to argue. At the same time they lay a bottle of beer
on the result of an air-fight that's going on above us. Katczinsky
won't budge from the opinion, which as an old Front-hog, he rhymes:
Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay
And the war would be over and done in a day.
Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration
of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and
bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and
generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed
with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his
country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this
arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting.
The subject is dropped. Then the conversation turns to drill.
A picture comes before me. Burning midday in the barrack-yard. The
heat hangs over the square. The barracks are deserted. Everything
sleeps. All one hears is the drummers practising; they have
installed themselves anywhere and practise brokenly, dully,
monotonously. What a concord! Midday heat, barrack-square, and
drummers beating!
The windows of the barracks are empty and dark. From some of them
trousers are hanging to dry. The rooms are cool and one looks toward
them longingly.
O dark, musty platoon huts, with the iron bedsteads, the chequered
bedding, the lockers and the stools! Even you can become the object
of desire; out here you have a faint resemblance to home; your rooms,
full of the smell of stale food, sleep, smoke, and clothes!
Katczinsky paints it all in lively colours. What would we not give
to be able to go back to it! But we must not pursue that line of
thought any further.
Those early morning hours of instruction--"What are the parts of the
98 rifle?"--the midday hours of physical training--"Pianist, forward!
By the right, quick march. Report to the cook-house for
potato-peeling."
We indulge in reminiscences. Kropp laughs suddenly and says: "Change
at Löhne!"
That was our corporal's favourite game. Löhne is a railway junction.
In order that our fellows going on leave shouldn't get lost there,
Himmelstoss used to practise the change in the barrack-room. We had
to learn that at Löhne, to reach the branch-line, we must pass
through a subway. The beds represented the subway and each man stood
at attention on the left side of his bed. Then came the command:
"Change at Löhne!" and like lightning everyone scrambled under the
bed to the opposite side. We practised this for a whole hour----
Meanwhile the German aeroplane has been shot down. Like a comet it
bursts into a streamer of smoke and falls headlong. Kropp has lost
the bottle of beer. Disgruntled he counts out the money from his
wallet.
"Surely Himmelstoss was a very different fellow as a postman," say I,
after Albert's disappointment has subsided. "Then how does it come
that he's such a bully as a drill-sergeant?"
The question revives Kropp, more particularly as he hears there's no
more beer in the canteen. "It's not only Himmelstoss, there are lots
of them. As sure as they get a stripe or a star they become
different men, just as though they'd swallowed concrete."
"That's the uniform," I suggest.
"Roughly speaking it is," says Kat, and prepares for a long speech;
"but the root of the matter lies elsewhere. For instance, if you
train a dog to eat potatoes and then afterwards put a piece of meat
in front of him, he'll snap at it, it's his nature. And if you give
a man a little bit of authority he behaves just the same way, he
snaps at it too. The things are precisely the same. In himself man
is essentially a beast, only he butters it over like a slice of bread
with a little decorum. The army is based on that; one man must
always have power over the other. The mischief is merely that each
one has much too much power. A non-com. can torment a private, a
lieutenant a non-com., a captain a lieutenant, until he goes mad.
And because they know they can, they all soon acquire the habit more
or less. Take a simple case: we are marching back from the
parade-ground dog-tired. Then comes the order to sing. We are glad
enough to be able to trail arms but we sing spiritlessly. At once
the company is turned about and has to do another hour's drill as
punishment. On the march back the order to sing is given again, and
once more we start. Now what's the use of all that? It's simply
that the company commander's head has been turned by having so much
power. And nobody blames him. On the contrary, he is praised for
being strict. That, of course, is only a trifling instance, but it
holds also in very different affairs. Now I ask you: Let a man be
whatever you like in peace-time, what occupation is there in which he
can behave like that without getting a crack on the nose? He can
only do that in the army. It goes to the heads of them all, you see.
And the more insignificant a man has been in civil life the worse it
takes him."
"They say, of course, there must be discipline," ventures Kropp
meditatively.
"True," growls Kat, "they always do. And it may be so; still it
oughtn't to become an abuse. But you try to explain that to a
blacksmith or a labourer or a workman, you try to make that clear to
a simple tommy--and that's what most of them are here. All he
understands is that he has been properly trained so that when he
comes up to the front he thinks he knows exactly what he should do in
every circumstance and what not. It's simply amazing, I tell you,
that the ordinary soldier survives so long up here in the front-line.
Simply amazing!"
No one protests. Everyone knows that drill ceases only in the
front-line and begins again a few miles behind, with all the
absurdities of saluting and parade. It is an iron law that the
soldier must be employed under every circumstance.
Here Tjaden comes up with a flushed face. He is so excited that he
stutters. Beaming with satisfaction he stammers out: "Himmelstoss is
on his way. He's coming to the front!"
* *
Tjaden has a special grudge against Himmelstoss, because of the way
he educated him in the barracks. Tjaden wets his bed, he does it at
night in his sleep. Himmelstoss maintained that it was sheer
laziness and invented a method worthy of himself for curing Tjaden.
He hunted up another piss-a-bed, named Kindervater, from a
neighbouring hut, and quartered him with Tjaden. In the huts there
were the usual bunks, one above the other in pairs, with mattresses
of wire-netting. Himmelstoss put these two so that one occupied the
upper and the other the lower bunk. The man underneath was of course
disgusted. The next night they were changed over and the lower one
put on top so that he could retaliate. That was Himmelstoss's system
of self-education.
The idea was low but not ill-conceived. Unfortunately it
accomplished nothing because the first assumption was wrong: it was
not laziness in either of them. Anyone who looked at their sallow
skin could see that. The matter ended in one of them always sleeping
on the floor, where he frequently caught cold.
Meanwhile Haie sits down beside us. He winks at me and rubs his paws
thoughtfully. We once spent the finest day of our army-life
together--the day before we left for the front. We had been allotted
to one of the recently formed regiments, but were first to be sent
back for equipment to the garrison, not to the reinforcement-depot,
of course, but to another barracks. We were due to leave next
morning early. In the evening we prepared ourselves to square
accounts with Himmelstoss.
We had sworn for weeks past to do this. Kropp had even gone so far
as to propose entering the postal service in peace-time in order to
be Himmelstoss's superior when he became a postman again. He
revelled in the thought of how he would grind him. It was this that
made it impossible for him to crush us altogether--we always reckoned
that later, at the end of the war, we would have our revenge on him.
In the meantime we decided to give him a good hiding. What could he
do to us anyhow if he didn't recognize us and we left early the next
morning?
We knew which pub he used to visit every evening. Returning to the
barracks he had to go along a dark, uninhabited road. There we
waited for him behind a pile of stones. I had a bed-cover with me.
We trembled with suspense, hoping he would be alone. At last we
heard his footstep, which we recognized easily, so often had we heard
it in the mornings as the door flew open and he bawled: "Get up!"
"Alone?" whispered Kropp.
"Alone."
I slipped round the pile of stones with Tjaden.
Himmelstoss seemed a little elevated; he was singing. His
belt-buckle gleamed. He came on unsuspectingly.
We seized the bed-cover, made a quick leap, threw it over his head
from behind and pulled it round him so that he stood there in a white
sack unable to raise his arms. The singing stopped. The next moment
Haie Westhus was there, and spreading out his arms he shoved us back
in order to be first in. He put himself in position with evident
satisfaction, raised his arm like a signal-mast and his hand like a
coal-shovel and fetched such a blow on the white sack as would have
felled an ox.
Himmelstoss was thrown down, he rolled five yards and started to
yell. But we were prepared for that and had brought a cushion. Haie
squatted down, laid the cushion on his knees, felt where
Himmelstoss's head was and pressed it down on the pillow.
Immediately his voice was muffled. Haie let him get a gasp of air
every so often, when he would give a mighty yell that was immediately
hushed.
Tjaden unbuttoned Himmelstoss's braces and pulled down his trousers,
holding the whip meantime in his teeth. Then he stood up and set to
work.
It was a wonderful picture: Himmelstoss on the ground; Haie bending
over him with a fiendish grin and his mouth open with blood-lust,
Himmelstoss's head on his knees; then the convulsed, striped drawers,
the knock knees, executing at every blow most original movements in
the lowered breeches, and towering over them like a woodcutter the
indefatigable Tjaden. In the end we had to drag him away to get our
turn.
Finally Haie stood Himmelstoss on his feet again and gave one last
personal remonstrance. As he stretched out his right arm preparatory
to giving him a box on the ear he looked as if he were going to reach
down a star.
Himmelstoss staggered. Haie stood him up again, made ready and
fetched him a second, well-aimed beauty with the left hand.
Himmelstoss yelled and fell down on all fours cursing. His striped
postman's backside gleamed in the moonlight.
We disappeared at full speed.
Haie looked round once again and said wrathfully, satisfied and
rather mysteriously:
"Revenge is black-pudding."
Himmelstoss ought to have been pleased; his saying that we should
each educate one another had borne fruit for himself. We had become
successful students of his method.
He never discovered whom he had to thank for the business. At any
rate he scored a bed-cover out of it; for when we returned a few
hours later to look for it, it was no longer to be found.
That evening's work made us more or less content to leave next
morning. And an old buffer was pleased to describe us as "young
heroes."
CHAPTER IV
We have to go up on wiring fatigue. The motor lorries roll up after
dark. We climb in. It is a warm evening and the twilight seems like
a canopy under whose shelter we feel drawn together. Even the stingy
Tjaden gives me a cigarette and then a light.
We stand jammed in together, shoulder to shoulder, there is no room
to sit. But we do not expect that. Müller is in a good mood for
once; he is wearing his new boots.
The engines drone, the lorries bump and rattle. The roads are worn
and full of holes. We dare not show a light so we lurch along and
are often almost pitched out. That does not worry us, however. It
can happen if it likes; a broken arm is better than a hole in the
guts, and many a man would be thankful enough for such a chance of
finding his way home again.
Beside us stream the munition-columns in long files. They are making
the pace, they overtake us going forward. We joke with them and they
answer back.
A wall becomes visible, it belongs to a house which lies on the side
of the road. I suddenly prick up my ears. Am I deceived? Again I
hear distinctly the cackle of geese. A glance at Katczinsky--a
glance from him to me; we understand one another.
"Kat, I hear some aspirants for the frying-pan over there."
He nods. "It will be attended to when we come back. I have their
number."
Of course Kat has their number. He knows all about every leg of
goose within a radius of fifteen miles.
The lorries arrive at the artillery lines. The gun-emplacements are
camouflaged with bushes against aerial observation, and look like a
kind of military Feast of the Tabernacles. These branches might seem
gay and cheerful were not cannon embowered there.
The air becomes acrid with the smoke of the guns and the fog. The
fumes of powder taste bitter on the tongue. The roar of the guns
makes our lorry stagger, the reverberation rolls raging away to the
rear, everything quakes. Our faces change imperceptibly. We are
not, indeed, in the front-line, but only in the reserves, yet in
every face can be read: This is the Front, now we are within its
embrace.
It is not fear. Men who have been up as often as we have become
thick skinned. Only the young recruits are agitated. Kat explains
to them: "That was a twelve-inch. You hear the explosion first and
afterwards comes the sound of the gun."
But the hollow sound of the firing does not reach us. It is
swallowed up in the general murmur of the front. Kat listens:
"There'll be a bombardment to-night."
We all listen. The front is restless. "The Tommies are firing
already," says Kropp.
The shelling can be heard distinctly. It is the English batteries to
the right of our section. They are beginning an hour too soon.
According to us they start punctually at ten o'clock.
"What's got them?" says Müller, "their clocks must be fast."
"There'll be a bombardment, I tell you, I can feel it in my bones."
Kat shrugs his shoulders.
Three shells land beside us. The burst of flame shoots across the
fog, the fragments howl and drone. We shiver and are glad to think
that we shall be back in the huts early in the morning.
Our faces are neither paler nor more flushed than usual; they are not
more tense nor more flabby--and yet they are changed. We feel that
in our blood a contact has shot home. That is no figure of speech;
it is fact. It is the front, the consciousness of the front, that
makes this contact. The moment that the first shells whistle over
and the air is rent with the explosions there is suddenly in our
veins, in our hands, in our eyes a tense waiting, a watching, a
heightened alertness, a strange sharpening of the senses. The body
with one bound is in full readiness.
It often seems to me as though it were the vibrating, shuddering air
that with a noiseless leap springs upon us; or as though the front
itself emitted an electric current which awakened unknown
nerve-centres.
Every time it is the same. We start out for the front plain
soldiers, either cheerful or gloomy: then come the first
gun-emplacements and every word of our speech has a new ring.
When Kat stands in front of the hut and says: "There'll be a
bombardment," that is merely his own opinion; but if he says it here,
then the sentence has the sharpness of a bayonet in the moonlight, it
cuts clean through the thought, it thrusts nearer and speaks to this
unknown thing that is awakened in us, a dark meaning--"There'll be a
bombardment." Perhaps it is our inner and most secret life that
shivers and falls on guard.
* *
To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still
water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex
sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself.
From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us--mostly
from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the
soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully,
when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of
death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his
mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her
security; she shelters him and gives him a new lease of ten seconds
of life, receives him again and often for ever.
Earth!--Earth!--Earth!
Earth with thy folds, and hollows and holes, into which a man may
fling himself and crouch down! In the spasm of terror, under the
hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O
Earth, thou grantest us the great resisting surge of new-won life.
Our being, almost utterly carried away by the fury of the storm,
streams back through our hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones,
bury ourselves in thee, and through the long minutes in a mute agony
of hope bite into thee with our lips!
At the sound of the first droning of the shells we rush back, in one
part of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that is
awakened in us we are led and protected. It is not conscious; it is
far quicker, much more sure, less fallible, than consciousness. One
cannot explain it. A man is walking along without thought or
heed;--suddenly he throws himself down on the ground and a storm of
fragments flies harmlessly over him;--yet he cannot remember either
to have heard the shell coming or to have thought of flinging himself
down. But had he not abandoned himself to the impulse he would now
be a heap of mangled flesh. It is this other, this second sight in
us, that has thrown us to the ground and saved us, without our
knowing how. If it were not so, there would not be one man alive
from Flanders to the Vosges.
We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers--we reach the zone where
the front begins and become on the instant human animals.
* *
An indigent looking wood receives us. We pass by the soup-kitchens.
Under cover of the wood we climb out. The lorries turn back. They
are to collect us again in the morning, before dawn.
Mist and the smoke of guns lie breast-high over the fields. The moon
is shining. Along the road troops file. Their helmets gleam softly
in the moonlight. The heads and the rifles stand out above the white
mist, nodding heads, rocking carriers of guns.
Farther on the mist ends. Here the heads become figures; coats,
trousers, and boots appear out of the mist as from a milky pool.
They become a column. The column marches on, straight ahead, the
figures resolve themselves into a block, individuals are no longer
recognizable, the dark wedge presses onward, fantastically topped by
the heads and weapons floating off on the milky pool. A column--not
men at all.
Guns and munition wagons are moving along a cross-road. The backs of
the horses shine in the moonlight, their movements are beautiful,
they toss their heads, and their eyes gleam. The guns and the wagons
float before the dim background of the moonlit landscape, the riders
in their steel helmets resemble knights of a forgotten time; it is
strangely beautiful and arresting.
We push on to the pioneer dump. Some of us load our shoulders with
pointed and twisted iron stakes; others thrust smooth iron rods
through rolls of wire and go off with them. The burdens are awkward
and heavy.
The ground becomes more broken. From ahead come warnings: "Look out,
deep shell-hole on the left"--"Mind, trenches"----
Our eyes peer out, our feet and our sticks feel in front of us before
they take the weight of the body. Suddenly the line halts; I bump my
face against the roll of wire carried by the man in front and curse.
There are some shell-smashed lorries in the road. Another order:
"Cigarettes and pipes out," We are getting near the line.
In the meantime it has become pitch dark. We skirt a small wood and
then have the front line immediately before us.
An uncertain, red glow spreads along the sky line from one end to the
other. It is in perpetual movement, punctuated with the bursts of
flame from the muzzles of the batteries. Balls of light rise up high
above it, silver and red spheres which explode and rain down in
showers of red, white, and green stars. French rockets go up, which
unfold a silk parachute to the air and drift slowly down. They light
up everything as bright as day, their light shines on us and we see
our shadows sharply outlined on the ground. They hover for the space
of a minute before they burn out. Immediately fresh ones shoot up to
the sky, and again green, red, and blue stars.
"Bombardment," says Kat.
The thunder of the guns swells to a single heavy roar and then breaks
up again into separate explosions. The dry bursts of the
machine-guns rattle. Above us the air teems with invisible swift
movement, with howls, pipings, and hisses. They are the smaller
shells;--and amongst them, booming through the night like an organ,
go the great coal-boxes and the heavies. They have a hoarse, distant
bellow like a rutting stag and make their way high above the howl and
whistle of the smaller shells. It reminds me of flocks of wild geese
when I hear them. Last autumn the wild geese flew day after day
across the path of the shells.
The searchlights begin to sweep the dark sky. They slide along it
like gigantic tapering rulers. One of them pauses, and quivers a
little. Immediately a second is beside him, a black insect is caught
between them and tries to escape--the airman. He hesitates, is
blinded and falls.
* *
At regular intervals we ram in the iron stakes. Two men hold a roll
and the others spool off the barbed wire. It is that awful stuff
with close-set, long spikes. I am not used to unrolling it and tear
my hand.
After a few hours it is done. But there is still some time before
the lorries come. Most of us lie down and sleep. I try also, but it
has turned too chilly. Near to the sea one is constantly waked by
the cold.
Once I fall fast asleep. Then waking suddenly with a start I do not
know where I am. I see the stars, I see the rockets, and for a
moment have the impression that I have fallen asleep at a garden
fête. I don't know whether it is morning or evening, I lie in the
pale cradle of the twilight, and listen for soft words which will
come, soft and near--am I crying? I put my hand to my eyes, it is so
fantastic, am I a child? Smooth skin:--it lasts only a second, then
I recognize the silhouette of Katczinsky. The old veteran, he sits
quietly and smokes his pipe--a covered pipe of course. When he sees
I am awake, he says: "That gave you a fright. It was only a
nose-cap, it landed in the bushes over there."
I sit up, I feel myself strangely alone. It's good Kat is there. He
gazes thoughtfully at the front and says:
"Mighty fine fire-works if they weren't so dangerous."
One lands behind us. Two recruits jump up terrified. A couple of
minutes later another comes over, nearer this time. Kat knocks out
his pipe. "It makes a glow."
Then it begins in earnest. We crawl away as well as we can in our
haste. The next lands fair among us. Two fellows cry out. Green
rockets shoot up on the sky-line. Barrage. The mud flies high,
fragments whizz past. The crack of the guns is heard long after the
roar of the explosions.
Beside us lies a fair-headed recruit in utter terror. He has buried
his face in his hands, his helmet has fallen off. I fish hold of it
and try to put it back on his head. He looks up, pushes the helmet
off and like a child creeps under my arm, his head close to my
breast. The little shoulders heave. Shoulders just like
Kemmerich's. I let him be. So that the helmet should be of some use
I stick it on his behind;--not for a jest, but out of consideration,
since that is his highest part. And though there is plenty of meat
there, a shot in it can be damned painful. Besides, a man has to lie
a whole month on his belly in the hospital, and afterwards he would
be almost sure to have a limp.
It's got someone pretty badly. Cries are heard between the
explosions.
At last it grows quiet. The fire has lifted over us and is now
dropping on the reserves. We risk a look. Red rockets shoot up to
the sky. Apparently there's an attack coming.
Where we are it is still quiet. I sit up and shake the recruit by
the shoulder. "All over, kid! It's all right this time."
He looks round him dazedly. "You'll get used to it soon," I tell him.
He sees his helmet and puts it on. Gradually he comes to. Then
suddenly he turns fiery red and looks confused. Cautiously he
reaches his hand to his behind and looks at me dismally.
I understand at once: Gun-shy. That wasn't the reason I had stuck
his helmet over it. "That's no disgrace," I reassure him: "Many's
the man before you has had his pants full after the first
bombardment. Go behind that bush there and throw your underpants
away. Get along----"
* *
He goes off. Things become quieter, but the cries do not cease.
"What's up, Albert?" I ask.
"A couple of columns over there have got it in the neck."
The cries continue. It is not men, they could not cry so terribly.
"Wounded horses," says Kat.
It's unendurable. It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred
creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning.
We are pale. Detering stands up. "God! For God's sake! Shoot
them!"
He is a farmer and very fond of horses. It gets under his skin.
Then as if deliberately the fire dies down again. The screaming of
the beasts becomes louder. One can no longer distinguish whence in
this now quiet, silvery landscape it comes; ghostly, invisible, it is
everywhere, between heaven and earth it rolls on immeasurably.
Detering raves and yells out: "Shoot them! Shoot them, can't you?
damn you again!"
"They must look after the men first," says Kat quietly.
We stand up and try to see where it is. If we could only see the
animals we should be able to endure it better. Müller has a pair of
glasses. We see a dark group, bearers with stretchers, and larger
black clumps moving about. Those are the wounded horses. But not
all of them. Some gallop away in the distance, fall down, and then
run on farther. The belly of one is ripped open, the guts trail out.
He becomes tangled in them and falls, then he stands up again.
Detering raises his gun and aims. Kat hits it up in the air. "Are
you mad----?"
Detering trembles and throws his rifle on the ground.
We sit down and hold our ears. But this appalling noise, these
groans and screams penetrate, they penetrate everywhere.
We can bear almost anything. But now the sweat breaks out on us. We
must get up and run, no matter where, but where these cries can no
longer be heard. And it is not men, only horses.
From the dark group stretchers move off again. Then single shots
crack out. The black heap is convulsed and becomes thinner. At
last! But still it is not the end. The men cannot overtake the
wounded beasts which fly in their pain, their wide open mouths full
of anguish. One of the men goes down on his knee, a shot--one horse
drops--another. The last one props himself on his forelegs and drags
himself round in a circle like a merry-go-round; squatting, it drags
round in circles on its stiffened forelegs, apparently its back is
broken. The soldier runs up and shoots it. Slowly, humbly it sinks
to the ground.
We take our hands from our ears. The cries are silenced. Only a
long-drawn, dying sigh still hangs on the air.
Then again only the rockets, the singing of the shells, and the
stars--and they shine out wonderfully.
Detering walks up and down cursing: "Like to know what harm they've
done." He returns to it once again. His voice is agitated, it
sounds almost dignified as he says: "I tell you it is the vilest
baseness to use horses in the war."
* *
We go back. It is time we returned to the lorries. The sky is
become a bit brighter. Three o'clock in the morning. The breeze is
fresh and cool, the pale hour makes our faces look grey.
We trudge onward in single file through the trenches and shell-holes
and come again to the zone of mist. Katczinsky is restive, that's a
bad sign.
"What's up, Kat?" says Kropp.
"I wish I were back home." Home--he means the huts.
"It won't last much longer, Kat."
He is nervous. "I don't know, I don't know----"
We come to the communication-trench and then to the open fields. The
little wood reappears; we know every foot of ground here. There's
the cemetery with the mounds and the black crosses.
That moment it breaks out behind us, swells, roars, and thunders. We
duck down--a cloud of flame shoots up a hundred yards ahead of us.
The next minute under a second explosion part of the wood rises
slowly in the air, three or four trees sail up and then crash to
pieces. The shells begin to hiss like safety-valves--heavy fire----
"Take cover!" yells somebody--"Cover!"
The fields are flat, the wood is too distant and dangerous--the only
cover is the graveyard and the mounds. We stumble across in the dark
and as though spirited away every man lies glued behind a mound.
Not a moment too soon. The dark goes mad. It heaves and raves.
Darknesses blacker than the night rush on us with giant strides, over
us and away. The flames of the explosions light up the graveyard.
There is no escape anywhere. By the light of the shells I try to get
a view of the fields. They are a surging sea, daggers of flame from
the explosions leap up like fountains. It is impossible for anyone
to break through it.
The wood vanishes, it is pounded, crushed, torn to pieces. We must
stay here in the grave-yard.
The earth bursts before us. It rains clods. I feel a smack. My
sleeve is torn away by a splinter. I shut my fist. No pain. Still
that does not reassure me: wounds don't hurt till afterwards. I feel
the arm all over. It is grazed but sound. Now a crack on the skull,
I begin to lose consciousness. Like lightning the thought comes to
me: Don't faint, sink down in the black broth and immediately come up
to the top again. A splinter slashes into my helmet, but has
travelled so far that it does not go through. I wipe the mud out of
my eyes. A hole is torn up in front of me. Shells hardly ever land
in the same hole twice, I'll get into it. With one bound I fling
myself down and lie on the earth as flat as a fish; there it whistles
again, quickly I crouch together, claw for cover, feel something on
the left, shove in beside it, it gives way, I groan, the earth leaps,
the blast thunders in my ears, I creep under the yielding thing,
cover myself with it, draw it over me, it is wood, cloth, cover,
cover, miserable cover against the whizzing splinters.
I open my eyes--my fingers grasp a sleeve, an arm. A wounded man? I
yell to him--no answer--a dead man. My hand gropes farther,
splinters of wood--now I remember again that we are lying in the
graveyard.
But the shelling is stronger than everything. It wipes out the
sensibilities, I merely crawl still deeper into the coffin, it should
protect me, and especially as Death himself lies in it too.
Before me gapes the shell-hole. I grasp it with my eyes as with
fists. With one leap I must be in it. There, I get a smack in the
face, a hand clamps on to my shoulder--has the dead man waked
up?--The hand shakes me, I turn my head, in the second of light I
stare into the face of Katczinsky, he has his mouth wide open and is
yelling. I hear nothing, he rattles me, comes nearer, in a momentary
lull his voice reaches me: "Gas--Gaas--Gaaas--Pass it on."
I grab for my gas-mask. Some distance from me there lies someone. I
think of nothing but this: That fellow there must know:
Gaaas--Gaaas----
I call, I lean toward him, I swipe at him with the satchel, he
doesn't see--once again, again--he merely ducks--it's a recruit--I
look at Kat desperately, he has his mask ready--I pull out mine too,
my helmet falls to one side, it slips over my face, I reach the man,
his satchel is on the side nearest me, I seize the mask, pull it over
his head, he understands, I let go and with a jump drop back into the
shell-hole.
The dull thud of the gas-shells mingles with the crashes of the high
explosives. A bell sounds between the explosions, gongs, and metal
clappers warning everyone--Gas--Gas--Gaas.
Someone plumps down behind me, another. I wipe the goggles of my
mask clear of the moist breath. It is Kat, Kropp, and someone else.
All four of us lie there in heavy, watchful suspense and breathe as
lightly as possible.
These first minutes with the mask decide between life and death: is
it tightly woven? I remember the awful sights in the hospital: the
gas patients who in day-long suffocation cough their burnt lungs up
in clots.
Cautiously, the mouth applied to the valve, I breathe. The gas still
creeps over the ground and sinks into all hollows. Like a big, soft
jellyfish it floats into our shell-hole and lolls there obscenely. I
nudge Kat, it is better to crawl out and lie on top than to stay here
where the gas collects most. But we don't get as far as that; a
second bombardment begins. It is no longer as though the shells
roared; it is the earth itself raging.
With a crash something black bears down on us. It lands close beside
us; a coffin thrown up.
I see Kat move and I crawl across. The coffin has hit the fourth man
in our hole on his outstretched arm. He tries to tear off his
gas-mask with the other hand. Kropp seizes him just in time, twists
the hand sharply behind his back and holds it fast.
Kat and I proceed to free the wounded arm. The coffin lid is loose
and bursts open, we are easily able to pull it off, we toss the
corpse out, it slides down to the bottom of the shell-hole, then we
try to loosen the under-part.
Fortunately the man swoons and Kropp is able to help us. We no
longer have to be careful, but work away till the coffin gives with a
sigh before the spade that we have dug in under it.
It has grown lighter. Kat takes a piece of the lid, places it under
the shattered arm, and we wrap all our bandages round it. For the
moment we can do no more.
Inside the gas-mask my head booms and roars--it is nigh bursting. My
lungs are tight, they breathe always the same hot, used-up air, the
veins on my temples are swollen, I feel I am suffocating.
A grey light filters through to us. I climb out over the edge of the
shell-hole. In the dirty twilight lies a leg torn clean off; the
boot is quite whole, I take that all in at a glance. Now someone
stands up a few yards distant. I polish the windows, in my
excitement they are immediately dimmed again, I peer through them,
the man there no longer wears his mask.
I wait some seconds--he has not collapsed--he looks around and makes
a few paces--rattling in my throat I tear my mask off too and fall
down, the air streams into me like cold water, my eyes are bursting,
the wave sweeps over me and extinguishes me.
* *
The shelling has ceased. I drag myself to the crater and tell the
others. They take off their masks. We lift up the wounded man, one
taking his splintered arm. And so we stumble off hastily.
The graveyard is a mass of wreckage. Coffins and corpses lie strewn
about. They have been killed once again; but each of them that was
flung up saved one of us.
The hedge is destroyed, the rails of the light railway are torn up
and rise stiffly in the air in great arches. Someone lies in front
of us. We stop; Kropp goes on alone with the wounded man.
The man on the ground is a recruit. His hip is covered with blood;
he is so exhausted that I feel for my water-bottle where I have rum
and tea. Kat restrains my hand and stoops over him.
"Where's it got you, comrade?"
His eyes move. He is too weak to answer.
We cut off his trousers carefully. He groans. "Gently, gently, it
is much better----"
If he has been hit in the stomach he oughtn't to drink anything.
There's no vomiting, that's a good sign. We lay the hip bare. It is
one mass of mincemeat and bone splinters. The joint has been hit.
This lad won't walk any more.
I wet his temples with a moistened finger and give him a swig. His
eyes move again. We see now that the right arm is bleeding as well.
Kat spreads out two wads of dressing as wide as possible so that they
will cover the wound. I look for something to bind loosely round it.
We have nothing more, so I slit up the wounded man's trouser leg
still farther in order to use a piece of his underpants as a bandage.
But he is wearing none. I now look at him closely. He is the
fair-headed boy of a little while ago.
In the meantime Kat has taken a bandage from a dead man's pocket and
we carefully bind the wound. I say to the youngster who looks at us
fixedly: "We're going for a stretcher now----"
Then he opens his mouth and whispers: "Stay here----"
"We'll be back again soon," says Kat. "We are only going to get a
stretcher for you."
We don't know if he understands. He whimpers like a child and plucks
at us: "Don't go away----"
Kat looks around and whispers: "Shouldn't we just take a revolver and
put an end to it?"
The youngster will hardly survive the carrying, and at the most he
will only last a few days. What he has gone through so far is
nothing to what he's in for till he dies. Now he is numb and feels
nothing. In an hour he will become one screaming bundle of
intolerable pain. Every day that he can live will be a howling
torture. And to whom does it matter whether he has them or not----
I nod. "Yes, Kat, we ought to put him out of his misery."
He stands still a moment. He has made up his mind. We look
round--but we are no longer alone. A little group is gathering, from
the shell-holes and trenches appear heads.
We get a stretcher.
Kat shakes his head. "Such a kid----" He repeats it: "Young
innocents----"
* *
Our losses are less than was to be expected--five killed and eight
wounded. It was in fact quite a short bombardment. Two of our dead
lie in the upturned graves. We had merely to throw the earth in on
them.
We go back. We trot off silently in single file one behind the
other. The wounded are taken to the dressing-station. The morning
is cloudy. The bearers make a fuss about numbers and tickets, the
wounded whimper. It begins to rain.
An hour later we reach our lorries and climb in. There is more room
now than there was.
The rain becomes heavier. We take out waterproof sheets and spread
them over our heads. The rain rattles down, and flows off at the
sides in streams. The lorries bump through the holes, and we rock
to and fro in a half-sleep. Two men in the front of the lorry have
long forked poles. They watch for telephone wires which hang
crosswise over the road so densely that they might easily pull our
heads off. The two fellows take them at the right moment on their
poles and lift them over behind us. We hear their call
"Mind--wire--," dip the knee in a half-sleep and straighten up again.
Monotonously the lorries sway, monotonously come the calls,
monotonously falls the rain. It falls on our heads and on the heads
of the dead up in the line, on the body of the little recruit with
the wound that is so much too big for his hip; it falls on
Kemmerich's grave; it falls in our hearts.
An explosion sounds somewhere. We wince, our eyes become tense, our
hands are ready to vault over the side of the lorry into the ditch by
the road.
It goes no farther--only the monotonous cry: "Mind--wire,"--our knees
bend--we are again half asleep.
CHAPTER V
Killing each separate louse is a tedious business when a man has
hundreds. The little beasts are hard and the everlasting cracking
with one's fingernails very soon becomes wearisome. So Tjaden has
rigged up the lid of a boot-polish tin with a piece of wire over the
lighted stump of a candle. The lice are simply thrown into this
little pan. Crack! and they're done for.
We sit around with our shirts on our knees, our bodies naked to the
warm air and our hands at work. Haie has a particularly fine brand
of louse: they have a red cross on their heads. He suggests that he
brought them back with him from the hospital at Thourhout, where they
attended personally on a surgeon-general. He says he means to use
the fat that slowly accumulates in the tin-lid for polishing his
boots, and roars with laughter for half an hour at his own joke.
But he hasn't much success to-day; we are too preoccupied with
another affair.
The rumour has materialized. Himmelstoss has come. He appeared
yesterday; we've already heard the well-known voice. He seems to
have overdone it with a couple of young recruits on the ploughed
field at home, and unknown to him the son of the local magistrate was
watching. That cooked his goose.
He will meet some surprises here. Tjaden has been meditating for
hours what to say to him. Haie gazes thoughtfully at his great paws
and winks at me. The thrashing was the high water mark of his life.
He tells me he often dreams of it. Kropp and Müller are amusing
themselves. From somewhere or other, probably the
pioneer-cook-house, Kropp has bagged for himself a mess-tin full of
beans. Müller squints hungrily into it but checks himself and says:
"Albert, what would you do if it were suddenly peace-time again?"
"There won't be any civil life," says Albert bluntly.
"Well, but if--" persists Müller, "what would you do?"
"Clear out of this!" growls Kropp.
"Of course. And then what?"
"Get drunk," says Albert.
"Don't talk rot, I mean seriously----"
"So do I," says Kropp, "what else should a man do?"
Kat becomes interested. He levies tribute on Kropp's tin of beans,
swallows some, then considers for a while and says: "You might get
drunk first, of course, but then you'd take the next train for home
and mother. Peace-time, man, Albert----"
He fumbles in his oil-cloth pocket-book for a photograph and suddenly
shows it all round. "My old people!" Then he puts it back and
swears: "Damned lousy war----"
"It's all very well for you to talk," I tell him. "You've a wife and
children."
"True," he nods, "and I have to see to it that they've something to
eat."
We laugh. "They won't lack for that, Kat, you'd scrounge it from
somewhere."
Müller is insatiable and gives himself no peace. He wakes Haie
Westhus out of his dream. "Haie, what would you do if it was peace
time?"
"Give you a kick in the backside for the way you talk," I say. "How
does it come about exactly?"
"How does the cow-shit come on the roof?" retorts Müller laconically,
and turns to Haie Westhus again.
It is too much for Haie. He shakes his freckled head:
"You mean when the war's over?"
"Exactly. You've said it."
"Well, there'd be women of course, eh?"--Haie licks his lips.
"Sure."
"By Jove yes," says Haie, his face melting, "then I'd grab some good
buxom dame, some real kitchen wench with plenty to get hold of, you
know, and jump straight into bed. Just you think, boys, a real
feather-bed with a spring mattress; I wouldn't put trousers on again
for a week."
Everyone is silent. The picture is too good. Our flesh creeps. At
last Müller pulls himself together and says:
"And then what?"
A pause. Then Haie explains rather awkwardly: "If I were a non-com.
I'd stay with the Prussians and serve out my time."
"Haie, you've got a screw loose, surely!" I say.
"Have you ever dug peat?" he retorts good-naturedly. "You try it."
Then he pulls a spoon out of the top of his boot and reaches over
into Kropp's mess-tin.
"It can't be worse than digging trenches," I venture.
Haie chews and grins: "It lasts longer though. And there's no
getting out of it either."
"But, man, surely it's better at home."
"Some ways," says he, and with open mouth sinks into a day-dream.
You can see what he is thinking. There is the mean little hut on the
moors, the hard work on the heath from morning till night in the
heat, the miserable pay, the dirty labourer's clothes.
"In the army in peace time you've nothing to trouble about," he goes
on, "your food's found every day, or else you kick up a row; you've a
bed, every week clean under-wear like a perfect gent, you do your
non-com.'s duty, you have a good suit of clothes; in the evening
you're a free man and go off to the pub."
Haie is extraordinarily set on his idea. He's in love with it.
"And when your twelve years are up you get your pension and become a
village bobby, and you can walk about the whole day."
He's already sweating on it. "And just you think how you'd be
treated. Here a dram, there a pint. Everybody wants to be well in
with a bobby."
"You'll never be a non-com. though, Haie," interrupts Kat.
Haie looks at him sadly and is silent. His thoughts still linger
over the clear evenings in autumn, the Sundays in the heather, the
village bells, the afternoons and evenings with the servant girls,
the fried bacon and barley, the care-free evening hours in the
ale-house----
He can't part with all these dreams so abruptly; he merely growls:
"What silly questions you do ask."
He pulls his shirt over his head and buttons up his tunic.
"What would you do, Tjaden?" asks Kropp.
Tjaden thinks only of one thing. "See to it that Himmelstoss doesn't
get past me."
Apparently he would like most to have him in a cage and sail into him
with a club every morning. To Kropp he says warmly: "If I were in
your place I'd see to it that I became a lieutenant. Then you could
grind him till the water in his backside boils."
"And you, Detering?" asks Müller like an inquisitor. He's a born
schoolmaster with all his questions.
Detering is sparing with his words. But on this subject he speaks.
He looks at the sky and says only the one sentence: "I would go
straight on with the harvesting."
Then he gets up and walks off.
He is worried. His wife has to look after the farm. They've already
taken away two of his horses. Every day he reads the papers that
come, to see whether it is raining in his little corner of Oldenburg.
They haven't brought the hay in yet.
At this moment Himmelstoss appears. He comes straight up to our
group. Tjaden's face turns red. He stretches his length on the
grass and shuts his eyes in embarrassment.
Himmelstoss is a little hesitant, his gait becomes slower. Then he
marches up to us. No one makes any motion to stand up. Kropp looks
up at him with interest.
He continues to stand in front of us and wait. As no one says
anything he launches a "Well?"
A couple of seconds go by. Apparently Himmelstoss doesn't quite know
what to do. He would like most to set us all on the run again. But
he seems to have learned already that the front line isn't a parade
ground. He tries it on though, and by addressing himself to one
instead of to all of us hopes to get some response. Kropp is
nearest, so he favours him.
"Well, you here too?"
But Albert's no friend of his. "A bit longer than you, I fancy," he
retorts.
The red moustache twitches: "You don't recognize me any more, what?"
Tjaden now opens his eyes. "I do though."
Himmelstoss turns to him: "Tjaden, isn't it?"
Tjaden lifts his head. "And do you know what you are?"
Himmelstoss is disconcerted. "Since when have we become so familiar?
I don't remember that we ever slept in the gutter together?"
He has no idea what to make of the situation. He didn't expect this
open hostility. But he is on his guard: someone has already dinned
some rot into him about getting a shot in the back.
The question about the gutter makes Tjaden so mad that he becomes
almost witty: "No, you slept there by yourself."
Himmelstoss begins to boil. But Tjaden gets in ahead of him. He
must bring off his insult: "Wouldn't you like to know what you are?
A dirty hound, that's what you are. I've been wanting to tell you
that for a long time."
The satisfaction of months shines in his dull pig's eyes as he spits
out: Dirty hound!
Himmelstoss lets fly too, now. "What's that, you muck-rake, you
dirty peat-stealer? Stand up there, bring your heels together when
your superior officer speaks to you."
Tjaden winks solemnly. "You take a run and jump at yourself,
Himmelstoss."
Himmelstoss is a raging book of army regulations. The Kaiser
couldn't be more insulted. "Tjaden, I command you, as your superior
officer: Stand up!"
"Anything else you would like?" asks Tjaden.
"Will you obey my order or not?"
Tjaden replies, without knowing it, in the well-known classical
phrase.
At the same time he ventilates his backside.
"I'll have you court-martialled," storms Himmelstoss.
We watch him disappear in the direction of the Orderly Room. Haie
and Tjaden burst into a regular peat-digger's bellow. Haie laughs so
much that he dislocates his jaw, and suddenly stands there helpless
with his mouth wide open. Albert has to put it back again by giving
it a blow with his fist.
Kat is troubled: "If he reports you, it'll be pretty serious."
"Do you think he will?" asks Tjaden.
"Sure to," I say.
"The least you'll get will be five days close arrest," says Kat.
That doesn't worry Tjaden. "Five days clink are five days rest."
"And if they send you to the Fortress?" urges the thoroughgoing
Müller.
"Well, for the time being the war will be over so far as I am
concerned."
Tjaden is a cheerful soul. There aren't any worries for him. He
goes off with Haie and Leer so that they won't find him in the first
flush of the excitement.
* *
Müller hasn't finished yet. He tackles Kropp again.
"Albert, if you were really at home now, what would you do?"
Kropp is contented now and more accommodating:
"How many of us were there in the class exactly?"
We count up: out of twenty, seven are dead, four wounded, one in a
mad-house. That makes twelve privates.
"Three of them are lieutenants," says Müller. "Do you think they
would still let Kantorek sit on them?"
We guess not: we wouldn't let ourselves be sat on for that matter.
"What do you mean by the three-fold theme in 'William Tell'?" says
Kropp reminiscently, and roars with laughter.
"What was the purpose of the Poetic League of Göttingen?" asks Müller
suddenly and earnestly.
"How many children had Charles the Bald?" I interrupt gently.
"You'll never make anything of your life, Bäumer," croaks Müller.
"When was the Battle of Zana?" Kropp wants to know.
"You lack the studious mind, Kropp, sit down, three minus----" I wink.
"What offices did Lycurgus consider the most important for the
state?" asks Müller, pretending to take off his pince-nez.
"Does it go: 'We Germans fear God and none else in the whole world,'
or 'We, the Germans, fear God and----'" I submit.
"How many inhabitants has Melbourne?" asks Müller.
"How do you expect to succeed in life if you don't know that?" I ask
Albert hotly.
Which he caps with: "What is meant by Cohesion?"
We remember mighty little of all that rubbish. Anyway, it has never
been the slightest use to us. At school nobody ever taught us how to
light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made
with wet wood--nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly
because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs.
Müller says thoughtfully: "What's the use. We'll have to go back and
sit on the forms again."
I consider that out of the question. "We might take a special exam."
"That needs preparation. And if you do get through, what then? A
student's life isn't any better. If you have no money, you have to
work like the devil."
"It's a bit better. But it's rot all the same, everything they teach
you."
Kropp supports me: "How can a man take all that stuff seriously when
he's once been out here?"
"Still you must have an occupation of some sort," insists Müller, as
though he were Kantorek himself.
Albert cleans his nails with a knife. We are surprised at this
delicacy. But it is merely pensiveness. He puts the knife away and
continues: "That's just it. Kat and Detering and Haie will go back
to their jobs because they had them already. Himmelstoss too. But
we never had any. How will we ever get used to one after this,
here?"--he makes a gesture toward the front.
"We'll want a private income, and then we'll be able to live by
ourselves in a wood," I say, but at once feel ashamed of this absurd
idea.
"But what will really happen when we go back?" wonders Müller, and
even he is troubled.
Kropp gives a shrug. "I don't know. Let's get back first, then
we'll find out."
We are all utterly at a loss. "What could we do?" I ask.
"I don't want to do anything," replies Kropp wearily. "You'll be
dead one day, so what does it matter? I don't think we'll ever go
back."
"When I think about it, Albert," I say after a while, rolling over on
my back, "when I hear the word 'peace time,' it goes to my head; and
if it really came, I think I would do some unimaginable
thing--something, you know, that it's worth having lain here in the
muck for. But I can't even imagine anything. All I do know is that
this business about professions and studies and salaries and so
on--it makes me sick, it is and always was disgusting. I don't see
anything--I don't see anything at all, Albert."
All at once everything seems to me confused and hopeless.
Kropp feels it too. "It will go pretty hard with us all. But nobody
at home seems to worry much about it. Two years of shells and
bombs--a man won't peel that off as easy as a sock."
We agree that it's the same for everyone; not only for us here, but
everywhere, for everyone who is of our age; to some more, and to
others less. It is the common fate of our generation.
Albert expresses it: "The war has ruined us for everything."
He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the
world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our
life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and
we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion,
burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving,
from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in
the war.
* *
The Orderly Room shows signs of life. Himmelstoss seems to have
stirred them up. At the head of the column trots the fat
sergeant-major. It is queer that almost all pay-sergeant-majors are
fat.
Himmelstoss follows him, thirsting for vengeance. His boots gleam in
the sun.
We get up.
"Where's Tjaden?" the sergeant puffs.
No one knows, of course. Himmelstoss glowers at us wrathfully. "You
know very well. You won't say, that's the fact of the matter. Out
with it!"
Fatty looks round enquiringly; but Tjaden is not to be seen. He
tries another way.
"Tjaden will report at the Orderly Room in ten minutes."
Then he steams off with Himmelstoss in his wake.
"I have a feeling that next time we go up wiring I'll be letting a
bundle of wire fall on Himmelstoss's leg," hints Kropp.
"We'll have quite a lot of jokes with him," laughs Müller.--
That is our sole ambition: to knock the conceit out of a postman.--
I go into the hut and put Tjaden wise. He disappears.
Then we change our possy and lie down again to play cards. We know
how to do that: to play cards, to swear, and to fight. Not much for
twenty years;--and yet too much for twenty years.
Half an hour later Himmelstoss is back again. Nobody pays any
attention to him. He asks for Tjaden. We shrug our shoulders.
"Then you'd better find him," he persists. "Haven't you been to look
for him?"
Kropp lies back in the grass and says: "Have you ever been out here
before?"
"That's none of your business," retorts Himmelstoss. "I expect an
answer."
"Very good," says Kropp, getting up. "See up there where those
little white clouds are. Those are anti-aircraft. We were over
there yesterday. Five dead and eight wounded. It was a lot of fun.
Next time, when you go up with us, before they die the fellows will
come up to you, click their heels, and ask stiffly: 'Please may I go?
Please may I hop it? We've been waiting here a long time for someone
like you.'"
He sits down again and Himmelstoss disappears like a comet.
"Three days C.B.," Kat conjectures.
"Next time I'll let fly," I say to Albert.
But that is the end. The case comes up for trial in the evening. In
the Orderly Room sits our Lieutenant, Bertink, and calls us in one
after another.
I have to appear as a witness and explain the reason of Tjaden's
insubordination.
The story of the bed-wetting makes an impression. Himmelstoss is
recalled and I repeat my statement.
"Is that right?" Bertink asks Himmelstoss.
He tries to evade the question, but in the end has to confess, for
Kropp tells the same story.
"Why didn't someone report the matter, then?" asks Bertink.
We are silent: he must know himself how much use it is reporting such
things in the army. It isn't usual to make complaints in the army.
He understands it all right though, and lectures Himmelstoss, making
it plain to him that the front isn't a parade-ground. Then comes
Tjaden's turn, who gets a long sermon and three days open arrest. He
gives Kropp a wink and one day's open arrest. "It can't be helped,"
he says to him regretfully. He is a decent fellow.
Open arrest is quite pleasant. The clink was once a fowl-house;
there we can visit the prisoners, we know how to manage it. Close
arrest would have meant the cellar.
They used to tie us to a tree, but that is forbidden now. In many
ways we are treated quite like men.
An hour after Tjaden and Kropp are settled in behind their
wire-netting we make our way in to them. Tjaden greets us crowing.
Then we play skat far into the night. Tjaden wins of course, the
lucky wretch.
* *
When we break up Kat says to me: "What do you say to some roast
goose?"
"Not bad," I agree.
We climb up on a munition-waggon. The ride costs us two cigarettes.
Kat has marked the spot exactly. The shed belongs to a regimental
headquarters. I agree to get the goose and receive my instructions.
The out-house is behind the wall and the door shuts with just a peg.
Kat hoists me up. I rest my foot in his hands and climb over the
wall. Kat keeps watch below.
I wait a few moments to accustom my eyes to the darkness. Then I
recognize the shed. Softly I steal across, lift the peg, pull it out
and open the door.
I distinguish two white patches. Two geese, that's bad: if I grab
one the other will cackle. Well, both of them--if I'm quick, it can
be done.
I make a jump. I catch hold of one and the next instant the second.
Like a madman I bash their heads against the wall to stun them. But
I haven't quite enough weight. The beasts cackle and strike out with
their feet and wings. I fight desperately, but Lord! what a kick a
goose has! They struggle and I stagger about. In the dark these
white patches are terrifying. My arms have grown wings and I'm
almost afraid of going up into the sky, as though I held a couple of
captive balloons in my fists.
Then the row begins; one of them gets his breath and goes off like an
alarm clock. Before I can do anything, something comes in from
outside; I feel a blow, lie outstretched on the floor, and hear awful
growls. A dog. I steal a glance to the side, he makes a snap at my
throat. I lie still and tuck my chin into my collar.
It's a bull dog. After an eternity he withdraws his head and sits
down beside me. But if I make the least movement he growls. I
consider. The only thing to do is to get hold of my small revolver,
and that too before anyone arrives. Inch by inch I move my hand
toward it.
I have the feeling that it lasts an hour. The slightest movement and
then an awful growl; I lie still, then try again. When at last I
have the revolver my hand starts to tremble. I press it against the
ground and then say over to myself: Jerk the revolver up, fire before
he has a chance to grab, and then jump up.
Slowly I take a deep breath and become calmer. Then I hold my
breath, whip up the revolver, it cracks, the dog leaps howling to one
side, I make for the door of the shed and fall head over heels over
one of the damned geese.
At full speed I seize it again, and with a swing toss it over the
wall and clamber up. No sooner am I on top than the dog is up again
as lively as ever and springs at me. Quickly I let myself drop. Ten
paces away stands Kat with the goose under his arm. As soon as he
sees me we run.
At last we can take a breather. The goose is dead, Kat saw to that
in a moment. We intend to roast it, without telling anybody. I
fetch a stove and wood from the hut and we crawl into a small
deserted lean-to which we use for such purposes. The single window
space is heavily curtained. There is a sort of hearth, an iron plate
set on some bricks. We kindle a fire.
Kat plucks and cleans the goose. We put the feathers carefully to
one side. We intend to make two cushions out of them with the
inscription: "Sleep soft under shell fire." The sound of the
gun-fire from the front penetrates into our refuge. The glow of the
fire lights up our faces, shadows dance on the wall. Sometimes a
heavy crash and the hut shivers. Aeroplane bombs. Once we hear a
stifled cry. A hut must have been hit.
Aeroplanes drone; the tack-tack of machine guns breaks out. But no
light that could be observed shows from us.
We sit opposite one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby coats,
cooking a goose in the middle of the night. We don't talk much, but
I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than
even lovers have.
We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and
the circle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger,
the grease drips from our hands, in our hearts we are close to one
another, and the hour is like the room: flecked over with the lights
and shadows of our feelings cast by a quiet fire. What does he know
of me or I of him? formerly we should not have had a single thought
in common--now we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, and
are so intimate that we do not even speak.
It takes a long time to roast a goose, even when it is young and fat.
So we take turns. One bastes it while the other lies down and
sleeps. A grand smell gradually fills the hut.
The noises without increase in volume, pass into my dream and yet
linger in my memory. In a half sleep I watch Kat dip and raise the
ladle. I love him, his shoulders, his angular, stooping figure--and
at the same time I see behind him woods and stars, and a clear voice
utters words that bring me peace, to me, a soldier in big boots,
belt, and knapsack, taking the road that lies before him under the
high heaven, quickly forgetting and seldom sorrowful, for ever
pressing on under the wide night sky.
A little soldier and a clear voice, and if anyone were to caress him
he would hardly understand, this soldier with the big boots and shut
heart, who marches because he is wearing big boots, and has forgotten
all else but marching. Beyond the sky-line is a country with
flowers, lying so still that he would like to weep. There are sights
there that he has not forgotten, because he never possessed
them--perplexing, yet lost to him. Are not his twenty summers there?
Is my face wet, and where am I? Kat stands before me, his gigantic,
stooping shadow falls upon me like home. He speaks gently, he smiles
and goes back to the fire.
Then he says: "It's done."
"Yes, Kat."
I stir myself. In the middle of the room shines the brown goose. We
take out our collapsible forks and our pocket-knives and each cuts
off a leg. With it we have army bread dipped in gravy. We eat
slowly and with gusto.
"How does it taste, Kat?"
"Good! And yours?"
"Good, Kat."
We are brothers and press on one another the choicest pieces.
Afterwards I smoke a cigarette and Kat a cigar. There is still a lot
left.
"How would it be, Kat, if we took a bit to Kropp and Tjaden?"
"Sure," says he.
We carve off a portion and wrap it up carefully in newspaper. The
rest we thought of taking over to the hut. Kat laughs, and simply
says: "Tjaden."
I agree, we will have to take it all.
So we go off to the fowl-house to wake them. But first we pack away
the feathers.
Kropp and Tjaden take us for magicians. Then they get busy with
their teeth. Tjaden holds a wing in his mouth with both hands like a
mouth-organ, and gnaws. He drinks the gravy from the pot and smacks
his lips:
"May I never forget you!"
We go to our hut. Again there is the lofty sky with the stars and
the oncoming dawn, and I pass on beneath it, a soldier with big boots
and a full belly, a little soldier in the early morning--but by my
side, stooping and angular, goes Kat, my comrade.
The outlines of the huts are upon us in the dawn like a dark, deep
sleep.
CHAPTER VI
There are rumours of an offensive. We go up to the front two days
earlier than usual. On the way we pass a shelled school-house.
Stacked up against its longer side is a high double wall of yellow,
unpolished, brand-new coffins. They still smell of fir, and pine,
and the forest. There are at least a hundred.
"That's a good preparation for the offensive," says Müller astonished.
"They're for us," growls Detering.
"Don't talk rot," says Kat to him angrily.
"You be thankful if you get so much as a coffin," grins Tjaden,
"they'll slip you a water-proof sheet for your old Aunt Sally of a
carcase."
The others jest too, unpleasant jests, but what else can a man
do?--The coffins are really for us. The organization surpasses
itself in that kind of thing.
Ahead of us everything is simmering. The first night we try to get
our bearings. When it is fairly quiet we can hear the transports
behind the enemy lines rolling ceaselessly until dawn. Kat says they
do not go back but are bringing up troops--troops, munitions, and
shells.
The English artillery has been strengthened, that we can detect at
once. There are at least four more batteries of twenty-fives to the
right of the farm, and behind the poplars they have put in
trench-mortars. Besides these they have brought up a number of those
little French beasts with instantaneous fuses.
We are in low spirits. After we have been in the dug-outs two hours
our own shells begin to fall in the trench. This is the third time
in four weeks. If it were simply a mistake in aim no one would say
anything, but the truth is that the barrels are worn out. The shots
are often so uncertain that they land within our own lines. To-night
two of our men were wounded by them.
* *
The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may
happen. We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a
suspense of uncertainty. Over us Chance hovers. If a shot comes, we
can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it
will fall.
It is this Chance that makes us indifferent. A few months ago I was
sitting in a dug-out playing skat; after a while I stood up and went
to visit some friends in another dug-out. On my return nothing more
was to be seen of the first one, it had been blown to pieces by a
direct hit. I went back to the second and arrived just in time to
lend a hand digging it out. In the interval it had been buried.
It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I
might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to
atoms and in the open may survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed.
No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes
in Chance and trusts his luck.
* *
We must look out for our bread. The rats have become much more
numerous lately because the trenches are no longer in good condition.
Detering says it is a sure sign of a coming bombardment.
The rats here are particularly repulsive, they are so fat--the kind
we call corpse-rats. They have shocking, evil, naked faces, and it
is nauseating to see their long, nude tails.
They seem to be mighty hungry. Almost every man has had his bread
gnawed. Kropp wrapped his in his waterproof sheet and put it under
his head, but he cannot sleep because they run over his face to get
at it. Detering meant to outwit them: he fastened a thin wire to the
roof and suspended his bread from it. During the night when he
switched on his pocket-torch he saw the wire swinging to and fro. On
the bread was riding a fat rat.
At last we put a stop to it. We cannot afford to throw the bread
away, because already we have practically nothing left to eat in the
morning, so we carefully cut off the bits of bread that the animals
have gnawed.
The slices we cut off are heaped together in the middle of the floor.
Each man takes out his spade and lies down prepared to strike.
Detering, Kropp, and Kat hold their pocket-lamps ready.
After a few minutes we hear the first shuffling and tugging. It
grows, now it is the sound of many little feet. Then the torches
switch on and every man strikes at the heap, which scatters with a
rush. The result is good. We toss the bits of rat over the parapet
and again lie in wait.
Several times we repeat the process. At last the beasts get wise to
it, or perhaps they have scented the blood. They return no more.
Nevertheless, before morning the remainder of the bread on the floor
has been carried off.
In the adjoining sector they attacked two large cats and a dog, bit
them to death and devoured them.
Next day there is an issue of Edamer cheese. Each man gets almost a
quarter of a cheese. In one way that is all to the good, for Edamer
is tasty--but in another way it is vile, because the fat red balls
have long been a sign of a bad time coming. Our forebodings increase
as rum is served out. We drink it of course; but are not greatly
comforted.
For days we loaf about and make war on the rats. Ammunition and
hand-grenades become more plentiful. We even overhaul the
bayonets--that is to say, the ones that have a saw on the blunt edge.
If the fellows over there catch a man with one of those he's killed
at sight. In the next sector some of our men were found whose noses
were cut off and their eyes poked out with their own saw-bayonets.
Their mouths and noses were stuffed with sawdust so that they
suffocated.
Some of the recruits have bayonets of this kind; we take them away
and give them the ordinary kind.
But the bayonet has practically lost its importance. It is usually
the fashion now to charge with bombs and spades only. The sharpened
spade is a more handy and many-sided weapon; not only can it be used
for jabbing a man under the chin, but it is much better for striking
with because of its greater weight, and if one hits between the neck
and shoulder it easily cleaves as far down as the chest. The bayonet
frequently jams on the thrust and then a man has to kick hard on the
other fellow's belly to pull it out again; and in the interval he may
easily get one himself. And what's more the blade often gets broken
off.
At night they send over gas. We expect the attack to follow and lie
with our masks on, ready to tear them off as soon as the first shadow
appears.
Dawn approaches without anything happening--only the everlasting,
nerve-wracking roll behind the enemy lines, trains, trains, lorries,
lorries; but what are they concentrating? Our artillery fires on it
continually, but still it does not cease.
We have tired faces and avoid each other's eyes. "It will be like
the Somme," says Kat gloomily. "There we were shelled steadily for
seven days and nights." Kat has lost all his fun since we have been
here, which is bad, for Kat is an old front-hog, and can smell what
is coming. Only Tjaden seems pleased with the good rations and the
rum; he thinks we might even go back to rest without anything
happening at all.
It almost looks like it. Day after day passes. At night I squat in
the listening-post. Above me the rockets and parachute-lights shoot
up and float down again. I am cautious and tense, my heart thumps.
My eyes turn again and again to the luminous dial of my watch; the
hands will not budge. Sleep hangs on my eyelids, I work my toes in
my boots in order to keep awake. Nothing happens till I am
relieved;--only the everlasting rolling over there. Gradually we
grow calmer and play skat and poker continually. Perhaps we will be
lucky.
All day the sky is hung with observation balloons. There is a rumour
that the enemy are going to put tanks over and use low-flying planes
for the attack. But that interests us less than what we hear of the
new flame-throwers.
* *
We wake up in the middle of the night. The earth booms. Heavy fire
is falling on us. We crouch into corners. We distinguish shells of
every calibre.
Each man lays hold of his things and looks again every minute to
reassure himself that they are still there. The dug-out heaves, the
night roars and flashes. We look at each other in the momentary
flashes of light, and with pale faces and pressed lips shake our
heads.
Every man is aware of the heavy shells tearing down the parapet,
rooting up the embankment and demolishing the upper layers of
concrete. When a shell lands in the trench we note how the hollow,
furious blast is like a blow from the paw of a raging beast of prey.
Already by morning a few of the recruits are green and vomiting.
They are too inexperienced.
Slowly the grey light trickles into the post and pales the flashes of
the shells. Morning is come. The explosion of mines mingles with
the gun-fire. That is the most dementing convulsion of all. The
whole region where they go up becomes one grave.
The reliefs go out, the observers stagger in, covered with dirt, and
trembling. One lies down in silence in the corner and eats, the
other, a reservist-reinforcement, sobs; twice he has been flung over
the parapet by the blast of the explosions without getting any more
than shell-shock.
The recruits are eyeing him. We must watch them, these things are
catching, already some lips begin to quiver. It is good that it is
growing daylight; perhaps the attack will come before noon.
The bombardment does not diminish. It is falling in the rear too.
As far as one can see it spouts fountains of mud and iron. A wide
belt is being raked.
The attack does not come, but the bombardment continues. Slowly we
become mute. Hardly a man speaks. We cannot make ourselves
understood.
Our trench is almost gone. At many places it is only eighteen inches
high, it is broken by holes, and craters, and mountains of earth. A
shell lands square in front of our post. At once it is dark. We are
buried and must dig ourselves out. After an hour the entrance is
clear again, and we are calmer because we have had something to do.
Our company commander scrambles in and reports that two dug-outs are
gone. The recruits calm themselves when they see him. He says that
an attempt will be made to bring up food this evening.
That sounds reassuring. No one had thought of it except Tjaden. Now
the outside world seems to draw a little nearer: if food can be
brought up, think the recruits, then it can't really be so bad.
We do not disabuse them; we know that food is as important as
ammunition and only for that reason must be brought up.
But it miscarries. A second party goes out, and it also turns back.
Finally Kat tries, and even he reappears without accomplishing
anything. No one gets through, not even a fly is small enough to get
through such a barrage.
We pull in our belts tighter and chew every mouthful three times as
long. Still the food does not last out; we are damnably hungry. I
take out a scrap of bread, eat the white and put the crust back in my
knapsack; from time to time I nibble at it.
* *
The night is unbearable. We cannot sleep, but stare ahead of us and
doze. Tjaden regrets that we wasted the gnawed pieces of bread on
the rats. We would gladly have them again to eat now. We are short
of water, too, but not seriously yet.
Towards morning, while it is still dark, there is some excitement.
Through the entrance rushes in a swarm of fleeing rats that try to
storm the walls. Torches light up the confusion. Everyone yells and
curses and slaughters. The madness and despair of many hours unloads
itself in this outburst. Faces are distorted, arms strike out, the
beasts scream; we just stop in time to avoid attacking one another.
The onslaught has exhausted us. We lie down to wait again. It is a
marvel that our post has had no casualties so far. It is one of the
few deep dug-outs.
A corporal creeps in; he has a loaf of bread with him. Three people
have had the luck to get through during the night and bring some
provisions. They say the bombardment extends undiminished as far as
the artillery lines. It is a mystery where the enemy gets all his
shells.
We wait and wait. By midday what I expected happens. One of the
recruits has a fit. I have been watching him for a long time,
grinding his teeth and opening and shutting his fists. These hunted,
protruding eyes, we know them too well. During the last few hours he
has had merely the appearance of calm. He had collapsed like a
rotten tree.
Now he stands up, stealthily creeps across the floor, hesitates a
moment and then glides towards the door. I intercept him and say:
"Where are you going?"
"I'll be back in a minute," says he, and tries to push past me.
"Wait a bit, the shelling will stop soon."
He listens and for a moment his eye becomes clear. Then again he has
the glowering eyes of a mad dog, he is silent, he shoves me aside.
"One minute, lad," I say. Kat notices. Just as the recruit shakes
me off Kat jumps in and we hold him.
Then he begins to rave: "Leave me alone, let me go out, I will go
out!"
He won't listen to anything and hits out, his mouth is wet and pours
out words, half choked, meaningless words. It is a case of
claustrophobia, he feels as though he is suffocating here and wants
to get out at any price. If we let him go he would run about
everywhere regardless of cover. He is not the first.
Though he raves and his eyes roll, it can't be helped, we have to
give him a hiding to bring him to his senses. We do it quickly and
mercilessly, and at last he sits down quietly. The others have
turned pale; let's hope it deters them. This bombardment is too much
for the poor devils, they have been sent straight from a
recruiting-depot into a barrage that is enough to turn an old
soldier's hair grey.
After this affair the sticky, close atmosphere works more than ever
on our nerves. We sit as if in our graves waiting only to be closed
in.
Suddenly it howls and flashes terrifically, the dug-out cracks in all
its joints under a direct hit, fortunately only a light one that the
concrete blocks are able to withstand. It rings metallically, the
walls reel, rifles, helmets, earth, mud, and dust fly everywhere.
Sulphur fumes pour in.
If we were in one of those light dug-outs that they have been
building lately instead of this deep one, not one of us would now be
alive.
But the effect is bad enough even so. The recruit starts to rave
again and two others follow suit. One jumps up and rushes out, we
have trouble with the other two. I start after the one who escapes
and wonder whether to shoot him in the leg--then it shrieks again, I
fling myself down and when I stand up the wall of the trench is
plastered with smoking splinters, lumps of flesh, and bits of
uniform. I scramble back.
The first recruit seems actually to have gone insane. He butts his
head against the wall like a goat. We must try to-night to take him
to the rear. Meanwhile we bind him, but in such a way that in case
of attack he can be released at once.
Kat suggests a game of skat: it is easier when a man has something to
do. But it is no use, we listen for every explosion that comes
close, miscount the tricks, and fail to follow suit. We have to give
it up. We sit as though in a hissing boiler that is being belaboured
from without on all sides.
Night again. We are deadened by the strain--a deadly tension that
scrapes along one's spine like a gapped knife. Our legs refuse to
move, our hands tremble, our bodies are a thin skin stretched
painfully over repressed madness, over an almost irresistible,
bursting roar. We have neither flesh nor muscles any longer, we dare
not look at one another for fear of some incalculable thing. So we
shut our teeth--it will end--it will end--perhaps we will come
through.
Suddenly the nearer explosions cease. The shelling continues but it
has lifted and falls behind us, our trench is free. We seize the
hand-grenades, pitch them out in front of the dug-out and jump after
them. The bombardment has stopped and a heavy barrage now falls
behind us. The attack has come.
No one would believe that in this howling waste there could still be
men; but steel helmets now appear on all sides out of the trench, and
fifty yards from us a machine-gun is already in position and barking.
The wire-entanglements are torn to pieces. Yet they offer some
obstacle. We see the storm-troops coming. Our artillery opens fire.
Machine-guns rattle, rifles crack. The charge works its way across.
Haie and Kropp begin with the hand-grenades. They throw as fast as
they can, others pass them, the handles with the strings already
pulled. Haie throws seventy-five yards, Kropp sixty, it has been
measured, the distance is important. The enemy as they run cannot do
much before they are within forty yards.
We recognize the distorted faces, the smooth helmets: they are
French. They have already suffered heavily when they reach the
remnants of the barbed wire entanglements. A whole line has gone
down before our machine-guns; then we have a lot of stoppages and
they come nearer.
I see one of them, his face upturned, fall into a wire cradle. His
body collapses, his hands remain suspended as though he were praying.
Then his body drops clean away and only his hands with the stumps of
his arms, shot off, now hang in the wire.
The moment we are about to retreat three faces rise up from the
ground in front of us. Under one of the helmets a dark pointed beard
and two eyes that are fastened on me. I raise my hand, but I cannot
throw into those strange eyes; for one mad moment the whole slaughter
whirls like a circus round me, and these two eyes that are alone
motionless; then the head rises up, a hand, a movement, and my
hand-grenade flies through the air and into him.
We make for the rear, pull wire cradles into the trench and leave
bombs behind us with the string pulled, which ensure us a fiery
retreat. The machine-guns are already firing from the next position.
We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves
against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs,
what do we know of men in this moment when Death with hands and
helmets is hunting us down--now, for the first time in three days we
can see his face, now, for the first time in three days we can oppose
him; we feel a mad anger. No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on
the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save
ourselves and be revenged.
We crouch behind every corner, behind every barrier of barbed wire,
and hurl heaps of explosives at the feet of the advancing enemy
before we run. The blast of the hand-grenades impinges powerfully on
our arms and legs; crouching like cats we run on, overwhelmed by this
wave that bears us along, that fills us with ferocity, turning us
into thugs, into murderers, into God only knows what devils; this
wave that multiplies our strength with fear and madness and greed of
life, seeking and fighting for nothing but our deliverance. If your
own father came over with them you would not hesitate to fling a bomb
into him.
The forward trenches have been abandoned. Are they still trenches?
They are blown to pieces, annihilated--there are only broken bits of
trenches, holes linked by tracks; nests of craters, that is all. But
the enemy's casualties increase. They did not count on so much
resistance.
* *
It is nearly noon. The sun blazes hotly, the sweat stings in our
eyes, we wipe it off on our sleeves and often blood with it. At last
we reach a trench that is in a somewhat better condition. It is
manned and ready for the counter-attack, it receives us. Our guns
open up in full blast and cut off the enemy attack.
The lines behind us stop. They can advance no farther. The attack
is crushed by our artillery. We watch. The fire lifts a hundred
yards and we break forward. Beside me a lance-corporal has his head
torn off. He runs a few steps more while the blood spouts from his
neck like a fountain.
It does not come quite to hand-to-hand fighting; they are driven
back. We arrive once again at our shattered trench and pass on
beyond it.
Oh, this turning back again! We reach the shelter of the reserves
and yearn to creep in and disappear;--but instead we must turn round
and plunge again into the horror. If we were not automata at that
moment we would continue lying there, exhausted, and without will.
But we are swept forward again, powerless, madly savage and raging;
we will kill, for they are still our mortal enemies, their rifles and
bombs are aimed against us, and if we don't destroy them, they will
destroy us.
The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under
the sun's rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy
world of automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our
lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor--thus we stagger
forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing
image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and
dead soldiers, who lie there--it can't be helped--who cry and clutch
at our legs as we spring away over them.
We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control
ourselves when our hunted glance lights on the form of some other
man. We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some
dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill.
A young Frenchman lags behind, he is overtaken, he puts up his hands,
in one he still holds his revolver--does he mean to shoot or to give
himself up?--a blow from a spade cleaves through his face. A second
sees it and tries to run farther; a bayonet jabs into his back. He
leaps in the air, his arms thrown wide, his mouth wide open, yelling;
he staggers, in his back the bayonet quivers. A third throws away
his rifle, cowers down with his hands before his eyes. He is left
behind with a few other prisoners to carry off the wounded.
Suddenly in the pursuit we reach the enemy line.
We are so close on the heels of our retreating enemies that we reach
it almost at the same time as they. In this way we suffer few
casualties. A machine-gun barks, but is silenced with a bomb.
Nevertheless, the couple of seconds has sufficed to give us five
stomach wounds. With the butt of his rifle Kat smashes to pulp the
face of one of the unwounded machine-gunners. We bayonet the others
before they have time to get out their bombs. Then thirstily we
drink the water they have for cooling the gun.
Everywhere wire-cutters are snapping, planks are thrown across the
entanglements, we jump through the narrow entrances into the
trenches. Haie strikes his spade into the neck of a gigantic
Frenchman and throws the first hand-grenade; we duck behind a
breastwork for a few seconds, then the whole section of trench before
us is empty. The next throw whizzes obliquely over the corner and
clears a passage; as we run past we toss handfuls down into the
dug-outs, the earth shudders, it crashes, dully and stifled, we
stumble over slippery lumps of flesh, over yielding bodies; I fall
into an open belly on which lies a clean, new officer's cap.
The fight ceases. We lose touch with the enemy. We cannot stay here
long but must retire under cover of our artillery to our own
position. No sooner do we know this than we dive into the nearest
dug-outs, and with the utmost haste seize on whatever provisions we
can see, especially the tins of corned beef and butter, before we
clear out.
We get back pretty well. There has been no further attack by the
enemy. We lie for an hour panting and resting before anyone speaks.
We are so completely played out that in spite of our great hunger we
do not think of the provisions. Then gradually we become something
like men again.
The corned beef over there is famous along the whole front.
Occasionally it has been the chief reason for a flying raid on our
part, for our nourishment is generally very bad; we have a constant
hunger.
We bagged five tins altogether. The fellows over there are well
looked after; it seems a luxury to us with our hunger-pangs, our
turnip jam, and meat so scarce that we simply grab at it. Haie has
scored a thin loaf of white French bread, and stuck it in behind his
belt like a spade. It is a bit bloody at one corner, but that can be
cut off.
It is a good thing we have something decent to eat at last; we still
have a use for all our strength. Enough to eat is just as valuable
as a good dug-out; it can save our lives; that is the reason we are
so greedy for it.
Tjaden has captured two water-bottles full of cognac. We pass them
round.
* *
The evening benediction begins. Night comes, out of the craters rise
the mists. It looks as though the holes were full of ghostly
secrets. The white vapour creeps painfully round before it ventures
to steal away over the edge. Then long streaks stretch from crater
to crater.
It is chilly. I am on sentry and stare into the darkness. My
strength is exhausted as always after an attack, and so it is hard
for me to be alone with my thoughts. They are not properly thoughts;
they are memories which in my weakness turn homeward and strangely
move me.
The parachute-lights shoot upwards--and I see a picture, a summer
evening, I am in the cathedral cloister and look at the tall rose
trees that bloom in the middle of the little cloister garden where
the monks lie buried. Around the walls are the stone carvings of the
Stations of the Cross. No one is there. A great quietness rules in
this blossoming quadrangle, the sun lies warm on the heavy grey
stones, I place my hand upon them and feel the warmth. At the
right-hand corner the green cathedral spire ascends into the pale
blue sky of the evening. Between the glowing columns of the cloister
is the cool darkness that only churches have, and I stand there and
wonder whether, when I am twenty, I shall have experienced the
bewildering emotions of love.
The image is alarmingly near; it touches me before it dissolves in
the light of the next star-shell.
I lay hold of my rifle to see that it is in trim. The barrel is wet,
I take it in my hand and rub off the moisture with my fingers.
Between the meadows behind our town there stands a line of old
poplars by a stream. They were visible from a great distance, and
although they grew on one bank only, we called them the poplar
avenue. Even as children we had a great love for them, they drew us
vaguely thither, we played truant the whole day by them and listened
to their rustling. We sat beneath them on the bank of the stream and
let our feet hang over in the bright, swift waters. The pure
fragrance of the water and the melody of the wind in the poplars held
our fancies. We loved them dearly, and the image of those days still
makes my heart pause in its beating.
It is strange that all the memories that come have these two
qualities. They are always completely calm, that is predominant in
them; and even if they are not really calm, they become so. They are
soundless apparitions that speak to me, with looks and gestures,
silently, without any word--and it is the alarm of their silence that
forces me to lay hold of my sleeve and my rifle lest I should abandon
myself to the liberation and allurement in which my body would dilate
and gently pass away into the still forces that lie behind these
things.
They are quiet in this way, because quietness is so unattainable for
us now. At the front there is no quietness and the curse of the
front reaches so far that we never pass beyond it. Even in the
remote depots and rest-areas the droning and the muffled noise of
shelling is always in our ears. We are never so far off that it is
no more to be heard. But these last few days it has been unbearable.
Their stillness is the reason why these memories of former times do
not awaken desire so much as sorrow--a strange, inapprehensible
melancholy. Once we had such desires--but they return not. They are
past, they belong to another world that is gone from us. In the
barracks they called forth a rebellious, wild craving for their
return; for then they were still bound to us, we belonged to them and
they to us, even though we were already absent from them. They
appeared in the soldiers' songs which we sang as we marched between
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,
their shoulders are too narrow, their bodies too slight; no uniform
was ever made to these childish measurements.
Between five and ten recruits fall to every old hand.
A surprise gas-attack carries off a lot of them. They have not yet
learned what to do. We found one dug-out full of them, with blue
heads and black lips. Some of them in a shell hole took their masks
off too soon; they did not know that the gas lies longest in the
hollows; when they saw others on top without masks they pulled theirs
off too and swallowed enough to scorch their lungs. Their condition
is hopeless, they choke to death with hæmorrhages and suffocation.
* *
In one part of the trench I suddenly run into Himmelstoss. We dive
into the same dug-out. Breathless we are all lying one beside the
other waiting for the charge.
When we run out again, although I am very excited, I suddenly think:
"Where's Himmelstoss?" Quickly I jump back into the dug-out and find
him with a small scratch lying in a corner pretending to be wounded.
His face looks sullen. He is in a panic; he is new to it too. But
it makes me mad that the young recruits should be out there and he
here.
"Get out!" I spit.
He does not stir, his lips quiver, his moustache twitches.
"Out!" I repeat.
He draws up his legs, crouches back against the wall, and shows his
teeth like a cur.
I seize him by the arm and try to pull him up. He barks.
That is too much for me. I grab him by the neck and shake him like a
sack, his head jerks from side to side.
"You lump, will you get out--you hound, you skunk, sneak out of it,
would you?" His eye becomes glassy, I knock his head against the
wall--"You cow"--I kick him in the ribs--"You swine"--I push him
toward the door and shove him out head first.
Another wave of our attack has just come up. A lieutenant is with
them. He sees us and yells; "Forward, forward, join in, follow."
And the word of command does what all my banging could not.
Himmelstoss hears the order, looks round him as if awakened, and
follows on.
I come after and watch him go over. Once more he is the smart
Himmelstoss of the parade-ground, he has even outstripped the
lieutenant and is far ahead.
Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns,
hand-grenades--words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.
Our faces are encrusted, our thoughts are devastated, we are weary to
death; when the attack comes we shall have to strike many of the men
with our fists to waken them and make them come with us--our eyes are
burnt, our hands are torn, our knees bleed, our elbows are raw.
How long has it been? Weeks--months--years? Only days. We see time
pass in the colourless faces of the dying, we cram food into us, we
run, we throw, we shoot, we kill, we lie about, we are feeble and
spent, and nothing supports us but the knowledge that there are still
feebler, still more spent, still more helpless ones there who, with
staring eyes, look upon us as gods that escape death many times.
In the few hours of rest we teach them. "There, see that waggle-top?
That's a mortar coming. Keep down, it will go clean over. But if it
comes this way, then run for it. You can run from a mortar."
We sharpen their ears to the malicious, hardly audible buzz of the
smaller shells that are not so easily distinguished. They must pick
them out from the general din by their insect-like hum--we explain to
them that these are far more dangerous than the big ones that can be
heard long beforehand.
We show them how to take cover from aircraft, how to simulate a dead
man when one is overrun in an attack, how to time hand-grenades so
that they explode half a second before hitting the ground; we teach
them to fling themselves into holes as quick as lightning before the
shells with instantaneous fuses; we show them how to clean up a
trench with a handful of bombs; we explain the difference between the
fuse-length of the enemy bombs and our own; we put them wise to the
sound of gas shells;--show them all the tricks that can save them
from death.
They listen, they are docile--but when it begins again, in their
excitement they do everything wrong.
Haie Westhus drags off with a great wound in his back through which
the lung pulses at every breath. I can only press his hand; "It's
all up, Paul," he groans and bites his arm because of the pain.
We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run
with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their splintered stumps
into the next shell-hole; a lance-corporal crawls a mile and a half
on his hands dragging his smashed knee after him; another goes to the
dressing station and over his clasped hands bulge his intestines; we
see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces; we find one man
who has held the artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in
order not to bleed to death. The sun goes down, night comes, the
shells whine, life is at an end.
Still the little piece of convulsed earth in which we lie is held.
We have yielded no more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to
the enemy. But on every yard there lies a dead man.
* *
We have been relieved. The wheels roll beneath us, we stand dully,
and when the call "Mind--wire" comes, we bend our knees. It was
summer when we came up, the trees were still green, now it is autumn
and the night is grey and wet. The lorries stop, we climb out--a
confused heap, a remnant of many names. On either side stand people,
dark, calling out the numbers of the regiments, the companies. And
at each call a little group separates itself off, a small handful of
dirty, pallid soldiers, a dreadfully small handful, and a dreadfully
small remnant.
Now someone is calling the number of our company, it is, yes, the
Company-Commander, he has got one too, his arm is in a sling. We go
over to him and I recognize Kat and Albert, we stand together, lean
against each other, and look at one another.
And we hear the number of our company called again and again. He
will call a long time, they do not hear him in the hospitals and
shell-holes.
Once again: "Second Company, this way!"
And then more softly: "Nobody else Second Company?"
He is silent, and then huskily he says: "Is that all?" and gives the
order: "Number!"
The morning is grey, it was still summer when we came up, and we were
one hundred and fifty strong. Now we freeze, it is autumn, the
leaves rustle, the voices flutter out wearily:
"One--two--three--four----" and cease at thirty-two. And there is a
long silence before the voice asks: "Anyone else?"--and waits and
then says softly: "In squads----" and then breaks off and is only
able to finish: "Second Company----" with difficulty: "Second
Company--march easy!"
A line, a short line trudges off into the morning.
Thirty-two men.
CHAPTER VII
They have taken us farther back than usual to a field depot so that
we can be re-organized. Our company needs more than a hundred
reinforcements.
In the meantime, when we are off duty, we loaf around. After a
couple of days Himmelstoss comes up to us. He has had the bounce
knocked out of him since he has been in the trenches and wants to get
on good terms with us. I am willing enough, because I saw how he
brought Haie Westhus in when he was hit in the back. Besides he's
decent enough to treat us at the canteen when we are out of funds.
Only Tjaden is still reserved and suspicious.
But he is won over, too, when Himmelstoss tells us that he is taking
the place of the sergeant-cook who has gone on leave. As a proof he
produces on the spot two pounds of sugar for us and a half-pound of
butter specially for Tjaden. He even sees to it that we are detailed
the next two or three days to the cook house for potato and turnip
peeling. The grub he gives us there is real officers' fare.
Thus for the moment we have the two things a soldier needs for
contentment: good food and rest. That's not much when one comes to
think of it. A couple of years ago we would have despised ourselves
terribly. But now we are quite happy. It is all a matter of
habit--even the front line.
Habit is the explanation of why we seem to forget things so quickly.
Yesterday we were under fire, to-day we act the fool and go foraging
through the countryside, to-morrow we go up to the trenches again.
We forget nothing really. But so long as we have to stay here in the
field, the front-line days, when they are past, sink down in us like
a stone; they are too serious for us to be able to reflect on them at
once. If we did that, we should have been destroyed long ago. I
soon found out this much:--terror can be endured so long as a man
simply ducks;--but it kills, if a man thinks about it.
Just as we turn into animals when we go up to the line, because that
is the only thing which brings us through safely, so we turn into
wags and loafers when we are out resting. We can do nothing else, it
is a sheer necessity. We want to live at any price; so we cannot
burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental
enough in peace time, would be out of place here. Kemmerich is dead,
Haie Westhus is dying, they will have a job with Hans Kramer's body
at the Judgment Day, piecing it together after a direct hit; Martens
has no legs any more, Meyer is dead, Max is dead, Beyer is dead,
Hammerling is dead, there are a hundred and twenty wounded men lying
somewhere or other; it is a damnable business, but what has it to do
with us now--we live. If it were possible for us to save them, then
it would be seen how much we cared--we would have a shot at it though
we went under ourselves; for we can be damned quixotic when we like;
fear we do not know much about--terror of death, yes; but that is a
different matter, that is physical.
But our comrades are dead, we cannot help them, they have their
rest--and who knows what is waiting for us? We will make ourselves
comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our
bellies, and drink and smoke so that the hours are not wasted. Life
is short.
* *
The terror of the front sinks deep down when we turn our backs upon
it; we make grim, coarse jests about it, when a man dies, then we say
he had nipped off his turd, and so we speak of everything; that keeps
us from going mad; as long as we take it that way we maintain our own
resistance.
But we do not forget. It's all rot that they put in the war-news
about the good humour of the troops, how they are arranging dances
almost before they are out of the front-line. We don't act like that
because we are in a good humour: we are in a good humour because
otherwise we should go to pieces. If it were not so we could not
hold out much longer; our humour becomes more bitter every month.
And this I know: all these things that now, while we are still in the
war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again,
and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death.
The days, the weeks, the years out here shall come back again, and
our dead comrades shall then stand up again and march with us, our
heads shall be clear, we shall have a purpose, and so we shall march,
our dead comrades beside us, the years at the Front behind
us:--against whom, against whom?
* *
Some time ago there was an army theatre in these parts. Coloured
posters of the performances are still sticking on a hoarding. With
wide eyes Kropp and I stand in front of it. We can hardly credit
that such things still exist. A girl in a light summer dress, with a
red patent-leather belt about her hips! She is standing with one
hand on a railing and with the other she holds a straw hat. She
wears white stockings and white shoes, fine buckle shoes with high
heels. Behind her smiles a blue lake with white-horses, at the side
is a bright bay. She is a lovely girl with a delicate nose, red
lips, and slender legs, wonderfully clean and well cared for, she
certainly bathes twice a day and never has any dirt under her nails.
At most perhaps a bit of sand from the beach.
Beside her stands a man in white trousers, a bluejacket, and sailor's
cap; but he interests us much less.
The girl on the poster is a wonder to us. We have quite forgotten
that there are such things, and even now we hardly believe our eyes.
We have seen nothing like it for years, nothing like it for
happiness, beauty, and joy. That is peace time, that is as it should
be; we feel excited.
"Just look at those thin shoes though, she couldn't march many miles
in those," I say, and then begin to feel silly, for it is absurd to
stand in front of a picture like this and think of nothing but
marching.
"How old would she be?" Kropp asks.
"About twenty-two at the most," I hazard.
"Then she would be older than us! She is not more than seventeen,
let me tell you!"
It gives us goose-flesh.
"That would be good, Albert, what do you think?"
He nods. "I have some white trousers at home too."
"White trousers," say I, "but a girl like that----"
We look askance at one another. There's not much to boast of
here--two ragged, stained, and dirty uniforms. It is hopeless to
compete.
So we proceed to tear the young man with the white trousers off the
hoarding, taking care not to damage the girl. That is something
towards it.
"We could go and get deloused, anyway," Kropp then suggests.
I am not very enthusiastic because it doesn't do one's clothes any
good and a man is lousy again inside two hours. But when we have
considered the picture once more, I declare myself willing. I even
go farther.
"We might see if we could get a clean shirt as well----"
"Socks might be better," says Albert, not without reason.
"Yes, socks too perhaps. Let's go and explore a bit."
Then Leer and Tjaden stroll up; they look at the poster and
immediately the conversation becomes smutty. Leer was the first of
our class to have intercourse, and he gave stirring details of it.
After his fashion he enjoys himself over the picture, and Tjaden
supports him nobly.
It does not distress us exactly. Who isn't smutty is no soldier; it
merely does not suit us at the moment, so we edge away and march off
to the delousing station with the same feeling as if it were a swell
gentlemen's outfitters.
* *
The houses in which we are billeted lie near the canal. On the other
side of the canal there are ponds flanked with poplars;--on the other
side of the canal there are women too.
The houses on our side have been abandoned. On the other side though
one occasionally sees inhabitants.
In the evening we go swimming. Three women come strolling along the
bank. They walk slowly and don't look away, although we have no
bathing suits.
Leer calls out to them. They laugh and stop to watch us. We fling
remarks at them in broken French, anything that comes into our heads,
hastily and all jumbled together, anything to detain them. They are
not specially wonderful pieces, but then where are such to be had
about here?
There is one slim little brunette. Her teeth gleam when she laughs.
She has quick movements, her dress swings loosely about her legs.
Although the water is cold we are very jovial and do our best to
interest them so that they will stay. We try to make jokes and they
answer with things we cannot understand; we laugh and beckon. Tjaden
is more crafty. He runs into the house, gets a loaf of army bread
and holds it up.
That produces a great effect. They nod and beckon us to come over.
But we don't dare to do that. It is forbidden to cross to the
opposite bank. There are sentries on all the bridges. It's
impossible without a pass. So we indicate that they should come over
to us; but they shake their heads and point to the bridge. They are
not allowed to pass either. They turn away and walk slowly down the
canal, keeping along the tow-path all the way. We accompany them
swimming. After a few hundred yards they turn off and point to a
house that stands a little distance away among the trees and
shrubbery.
Leer asks if they live there.
They laugh--sure, that's their house.
We call out to them that we would like to come, sometime when the
guards cannot see us. At night. To-night.
They raise their hands, put them together, rest their faces on them
and shut their eyes. They understand. The slim brunette does a
two-step. The blonde girl twitters: "Bread--good----"
Eagerly we assure them that we will bring some with us. And other
tasty bits too, we roll our eyes and try to explain with our hands.
Leer nearly drowns trying to demonstrate a sausage. If it were
necessary we would promise them a whole quartermaster's store. They
go off and frequently turn and look back. We climb out on the bank
on our side of the canal and watch to see whether they go into the
house for they might easily have been lying. Then we swim back.
No one can cross the bridge without leave, so we will simply have to
swim over at night. We are full of excitement. We cannot last out
without a drink, so we go to the canteen where there is beer and a
kind of punch.
We drink punch and tell one another lying tales of our experiences.
Each man gladly believes the other man's story, only waiting
impatiently till he can cap it with a taller one. Our hands are
fidgety, we smoke countless cigarettes, until Kropp says: "We might
as well take them a couple of cigarettes too." So we put some inside
our caps to keep them.
The sky turns apple-green. There are four of us, but only three can
go; we must shake off Tjaden, so ply him with rum and punch until he
rocks. As it turns dark we go to our billets, Tjaden in the centre.
We are all glowing and full of a lust for adventure.
The little brunette is mine, we settled that by cutting for her.
Tjaden drops on his sack of straw and snores. Once he wakes up and
grins so craftily that we are alarmed and begin to think he is
cheating, and that we have given him the punch to no purpose. Then
he drops back again and sleeps on.
We each get hold of a whole army loaf and wrap it up in newspaper.
The cigarettes we put in too, as well as three good rations of
liver-sausage that were issued to us this evening. That makes a
decent present.
We stow the things carefully in our boots; we have to take them to
protect our feet against treading on wire and broken glass on the
other bank. As we must swim for it we can take no other clothes.
But it is not far and quite dark.
We make off with our boots in our hands. Swiftly we slip into the
water, lie on our backs and swim, holding the boots with their
contents up over our heads.
We climb out carefully on the opposite bank, take out the packages
and put on our boots. We put the things under our arms. And so, all
wet and naked, clothed only in our boots, we break into a trot. We
find the house at once. It lies among the trees. Leer trips over a
root and skins his elbows.
"No matter," he says gaily.
The windows are shuttered. We slip round the house and try to peer
through the cracks. Then we grow impatient. Suddenly Kropp
hesitates:
"What if there's a Major in with them?"
"Then we just clear off," grins Leer, "he can try to read our
regimental numbers here," and smacks his behind.
The door of the court-yard stands open. Our boots make a great
clatter. The house door opens, a chink of light shines through and a
woman cries out in a scared voice.
"Ssh, ssh! camerade--bon ami--" we say, and show our packages
protestingly.
The other two are now on the scene, the door opens wide and the light
floods over us. They recognize us and all three burst into laughter
at our appearance. They rock and sway in the doorway, they laugh so
much. How supple their movements are!
"Un moment--" They disappear and throw us bits of clothing which we
gladly wrap round ourselves. Then we venture in. A small lamp burns
in the room, which is warm and smells a little of perfume. We unwrap
our parcels and hand them over to the women. Their eyes shine, it is
obvious that they are hungry.
Then we all become rather embarrassed. Leer makes the gestures of
eating, and then they come to life again and bring out plates and
knives and fall to on the food, and they hold up every slice of
liver-sausage and admire it before they eat it, and we sit proudly by.
They overwhelm us with their chatter;--we understand very little of
it, but we listen and the words sound friendly. No doubt we all look
very young. The little brunette strokes my hair and says what all
the French women say: "La guerre--grand malheur--pauvres garçons----"
I hold her arm tightly and press my lips into the palm of her hand.
Her fingers close round my face. Close above me are her bewildering
eyes, the soft brown of her skin and her red lips. Her mouth speaks
words I do not understand. Nor do I fully understand her eyes; they
seem to say more than we anticipated when we came here.
There are other rooms adjoining. In passing I see Leer, he has made
a great hit with the blonde. And he knows it, too. But I--I am lost
in remoteness, in weakness, and in a passion to which I yield myself
trustingly. My desires are strangely compounded of yearning and
misery. I feel giddy, there is nothing here that a man can hold on
to. We have left our boots at the door, they have given us slippers
instead, and now nothing remains to recall for me the assurance and
self-confidence of the soldier: no rifle, no belt, no tunic, no cap.
I let myself drop into the unknown, come what may--yet, in spite of
all, I feel somewhat afraid.
The little brunette contracts her brows when she is thinking; but
when she talks they are still. And often the sound does not quite
become a word but suffocates or floats away over me half-finished; an
arch, a pathway, a comet. What have I known of it--what do I know of
it?--The words of this foreign tongue, that I hardly understand, they
caress me to a quietness, in which the room grows dim, and dissolves
in the half light, and only the face above me lives and is clear.
How various is a face; but an hour ago it was strange and now it is
touched with a tenderness that comes, not from it, but out of the
night, the world and the blood, all these things seem to shine in it
together. The objects in the room are touched by it and transformed,
they become isolated, and I feel almost awed at the sight of my clear
skin when the light of the lamp falls upon it and the cool, brown
hand passes over it.
How different all this is from the conditions in the soldier's
brothels, to which we are allowed to go, and where we have to wait in
long queues. I wish I never thought of them; but desire turns my
mind to them involuntarily and I am afraid, for it might be
impossible ever to be free of them again.
But then I feel the lips of the little brunette and press myself
against them, my eyes close and I let it all fall from me, war and
terror and grossness, in order to awaken young and happy; I think of
the picture of the girl on the poster and, for a moment, believe that
my life depends on winning her. And if I press ever deeper into the
arms that embrace me, perhaps a miracle may happen....
. . . . . . . .
So, after a time we find ourselves reassembled again. Leer is in
high spirits. We pull on our boots and take our leave warmly. The
night air cools our hot bodies. The rustling poplars loom large in
the darkness. The moon floats in the heavens and in the waters of
the canal. We do not run, we walk beside one another with long
strides.
"That was worth a ration-loaf," says Leer.
I cannot trust myself to speak, I am not in the least happy.
Then we hear footsteps and dodge behind a shrub.
The steps come nearer, close by us. We see a naked soldier, in
boots, just like ourselves; he has a package under his arm, and
gallops onward. It is Tjaden in full course. He has disappeared
already.
We laugh. In the morning he will curse us.
Unobserved, we arrive again at our sacks of straw.
* *
I am called to the Orderly Room. The Company Commander gives me a
leave-pass and a travel-pass and wishes me a good journey. I look to
see how much leave I have got. Seventeen days--fourteen days leave
and three days for travelling. It is not enough and I ask whether I
cannot have five days for travelling. Bertinck points to my pass.
There I see that I am not to return to the front immediately. After
my leave I have to report for a course of training to a camp on the
moors.
The others congratulate me. Kat gives me good advice, and tells me I
ought to try to get a base-job. "If you are smart, you'll hang on to
it."
I would rather not have gone for another eight days; we are to stay
here that much longer and it is good here.
Naturally I have to stand the others drinks at the canteen. We are
all a little bit drunk. I become gloomy: I will be away for six
weeks-- That is lucky of course, but what may happen before I get
back? Shall I meet all these fellows again? Already Haie has
gone--who will the next be?
As we drink, I look at each of them in turn. Albert sits beside me
and smokes, he is silent, we have always been together;--opposite
squats Kat, with his drooping shoulders, his broad thumb, and calm
voice--Müller with the protruding teeth and the booming laugh; Tjaden
with his mousey eyes;--Leer who has grown a full beard and looks at
least forty.
Over us hangs a dense cloud of smoke. Where would a soldier be
without tobacco. The canteen is his refuge, and beer is far more
than a drink, it is a token that a man can move his limbs and stretch
in safety. We do it ceremonially, we stretch our legs out in front
of us and spit deliberately, that is the only way. How it all rises
up before a man when he is going away the next morning!
At night we go again to the other side of the canal. I am almost
afraid to tell the little brunette that I am going away, and when I
return we will certainly be far away from here; we will never see one
another again. But she merely nods and takes no special notice. At
first I am at a loss to understand, then it suddenly dawns on me.
Yes, Leer is right: if I were going up to the front, then she would
have again called me "pauvre garçon"; but merely going on leave--she
does not want to hear about that, that is not nearly so interesting.
May she go to the devil with her chattering talk. A man dreams of a
miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.
Next morning, after I have been de-loused, I go to the rail head.
Albert and Kat come with me. At the halt we learn that it will be a
couple of hours yet before the train leaves. The other two have to
go back to duty. We take leave of one another.
"Good luck, Kat; good luck, Albert."
They go off and wave once or twice. Their figures dwindle. I know
their every step and movement; I would recognize them at any
distance. Then they disappear. I sit down on my pack and wait.
Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone.
* *
I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a
soup-kitchen; I squat on many a bench;--then at last the landscape
becomes gloomy, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western
windows with its villages, their thatched roofs like caps, pulled
over the white-washed, half-timbered houses, its corn-fields,
gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the slanting light, its orchards,
its barns and old lime trees.
The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart
trembles. The train stamps and stamps onward, I stand at the window
and hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my
youth.
Smooth meadows, fields, farm-yards; a solitary team moves against the
sky-line along the road that runs parallel to the horizon--a barrier,
before which peasants stand waiting, girls waving, children playing
on the embankment, roads, leading into the country, smooth roads
without artillery.
It is evening, and if the train did not rattle I should cry out. The
plain unfolds itself.
In the distance, the soft, blue silhouette of the mountain ranges
begins to appear. I recognize the characteristic outline of the
Dolbenberg, a jagged comb, springing up precipitously from the limit
of the forests. Behind it should lie the town.
But now the sun streams through the world, dissolving everything in
its golden-red light, the train swings round one curve and then
another;--far away, in a long line one behind the other, stand the
poplars, unsubstantial, swaying and dark, fashioned out of shadow,
light, and desire.
The field swings round as the train encircles it, and the intervals
between the trees diminish; the trees become a block and for a moment
I see one only--then they reappear from behind the foremost tree and
stand out a long line against the sky until they are hidden by the
first houses.
A street-crossing. I stand at the window, I cannot drag myself away.
The others put their baggage ready for getting out. I repeat to
myself the name of the Street that we cross
ever--Bremerstrasse--Bremerstrasse--
Below there are cyclists, lorries, men; it is a grey street and a
grey subway;--it embraces me as though it were my mother.
Then the train stops, and there is the station with noise and cries
and sentries. I pick up my pack and fasten the straps, I take my
rifle in my hand and stumble down the steps.
On the platform I look round; I know no one among all the people
hurrying to and fro. A red-cross sister offers me something to
drink. I turn away, she smiles at me too foolishly, so obsessed with
her own importance: "Just look, I am giving a soldier coffee!"--She
calls me "Comrade," but I will have none of it.
Outside in front of the station the stream roars alongside the
street, it rushes foaming from the sluices of the mill bridge. There
stands the old, square watch-tower, in front of it the great mottled
lime tree and behind it the evening.
Here we have often sat--how long ago it is--; we have passed over
this bridge and breathed the cool, acid smell of the stagnant water;
we have leaned over the still water on this side of the lock, where
the green creepers and weeds hang from the piles of the bridge;--and
on hot days we rejoiced in the spouting foam on the other side of the
lock and told tales about our school-teachers.
I pass over the bridge, I look right and left; the water is as full
of weeds as ever, and it still shoots over in gleaming arches; in the
tower-building laundresses still stand with bare arms as they used to
over the clean linen, and the heat from the ironing pours out through
the open windows. Dogs trot along the narrow street, before the
doors of the houses people stand and follow me with their gaze as I
pass by, dirty and heavy laden.
In this confectioner's we used to eat ices, and there we learned to
smoke cigarettes. Walking down the street I know every shop, the
colonial warehouse, the chemist's, the tobacconist's. Then at last I
stand before the brown door with its worn latch and my hand grows
heavy. I open the door and a wonderful freshness comes out to meet
me, my eyes are dim.
The stairs creak under my boots. Upstairs a door rattles, someone is
looking over the railing. It is the kitchen door that was opened,
they are cooking potato-cakes, the house reeks of it, and to-day of
course is Saturday; that will be my sister leaning over. For a
moment I am shy and lower my head, then I take off my helmet and look
up. Yes, it is my eldest sister.
"Paul," she cries, "Paul----"
I nod, my pack bumps against the banisters; my rifle is so heavy.
She pulls a door open and calls: "Mother, mother, Paul is here."
I can go no further--mother, mother, Paul is here.
I lean against the wall and grip my helmet and rifle. I hold them as
tight as I can, but I cannot take another step, the staircase fades
before my eyes, I support myself with the butt of my rifle against my
feet and clench my teeth fiercely, but I cannot speak a word, my
sister's call has made me powerless, I can do nothing, I struggle to
make myself laugh, to speak, but no word comes, and so I stand on the
steps, miserable, helpless, paralysed, and against my will the tears
run down my cheeks.
My sister comes back and says: "Why, what is the matter?"
Then I pull myself together and stagger on to the landing. I lean my
rifle in a corner, I set my pack against the wall, place my helmet on
it, and fling down my equipment and baggage. Then I say fiercely:
"Bring me a handkerchief."
She gives me one from the cupboard and I dry my face. Above me on
the wall hangs the glass case with the coloured butterflies that once
I collected.
Now I hear my mother's voice. It comes from the bedroom.
"Is she in bed?" I ask my sister.
"She is ill--" she replies.
I go in to her, give her my hand and say as calmly as I can: "Here I
am, mother."
She lies still in the dim light. Then she asks anxiously:
"Are you wounded?" and I feel her searching glance.
"No, I have got leave."
My mother is very pale. I am afraid to make a light.
"Here I lie now," says she, "and cry instead of being glad."
"Are you sick, mother?" I ask.
"I am going to get up a little to-day," she says and turns to my
sister, who is continually running to the kitchen to watch that the
food does not burn: "And put out the jar of preserved
whortleberries--you like that, don't you?" she asks me.
"Yes, mother, I haven't had any for a long time."
"We might almost have known you were coming," laughs my sister,
"there is just your favourite dish, potato-cakes, and even
whortle-berries to go with them too."
"And it is Saturday," I add.
"Sit here beside me," says my mother.
She looks at me. Her hands are white and sickly and frail compared
with mine. We say very little, and I am thankful that she asks
nothing. What ought I to say? Everything I could have wished for
has happened. I have come out of it safely and sit here beside her.
And in the kitchen stands my sister making the evening bread and
singing.
"Dear boy," says my mother softly.
We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil
and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest
what they already know. When my mother says to me "dear boy," it
means much more than when another uses it. I know well enough that
the jar of whortleberries is the only one they have had for months,
and that she has kept it for me; and the somewhat stale cakes that
she gives me too. She has taken a favourable opportunity of getting
a few and has put them all by for me.
I sit by her bed, and through the window the chestnut trees in the
beer garden opposite glow in brown and gold. I breathe deeply and
say over to myself:--"You are at home, you are at home." But a sense
of strangeness will not leave me, I can find nothing of myself in all
these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there my case
of butterflies, and there the mahogany piano--but I am not myself
there. There is a distance, a veil between us.
I go and fetch my pack to the bedside and turn out the things I have
brought--a whole Edamer cheese, that Kat provided me with, two loaves
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
can not 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
wall opposite stand the book-shelves with my books.
I used to live in this room before I was a soldier. The books I
bought gradually with the money I earned by coaching. Many of them
are second-hand, all the classics for example, one volume in blue
cloth boards cost one mark twenty pfennig. I bought them complete
because I was thoroughgoing, I did not trust the editors of
selections, even though they may have chosen all the best. So I
purchased only "collected works." I read most of them with laudable
zeal, but few of them really appealed to me. I preferred the other
books, the moderns, which were of course much dearer. A few I came
by not quite honestly, I borrowed and did not return them because I
did not want to part with them.
One shelf is filled with school books. They are not so well cared
for, they are badly thumbed, and pages have been torn out for certain
purposes. Then below are periodicals, papers, and letters all jammed
in together with drawings and rough sketches.
I want to think myself back into that time. It is still in the room,
I feel it at once, the walls have preserved it. My hands rest on the
arms of the sofa; now I make myself at home and draw up my legs so
that I sit comfortably in the corner, in the arms of the sofa. The
little window is open, through it I see the familiar picture of the
street with the rising spire of the church at the end. There are a
couple of flowers on the table. Pen-holders, a shell as a
paper-weight, the ink-well--here nothing is changed.
It will be like this too, if I am lucky, when the war is over and I
come back here for good. I will sit here just like this and look at
my room and wait.
I feel excited; but I do not want to be, for that is not right. I
want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful,
nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The
breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the
books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that
lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future,
the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the
lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait.
It occurs to me that I must go and see Kemmerich's mother;--I might
visit Mittelstaedt too, he should be at the barracks. I look out of
the window;--beyond the sober picture of the street appears a range
of hills, distant and light; it changes to a clear day in autumn, and
I sit by the fire with Kat and Albert and eat potatoes baked in their
skins.
But I do not want to think of that, I sweep it away. The room shall
speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong
here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front that the
war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide,
know that it will then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually,
that it will have none but an outward power over us.
The backs of the books stand in rows. I know them all still, I
remember arranging them in order. I implore them with my eyes: Speak
to me--take me up--take me, Life of my Youth--you who are care-free,
beautiful--receive me again--
I wait, I wait.
Images float through my mind, but they do not grip me, they are mere
shadows and memories.
Nothing--nothing--
My disquietude grows.
A terrible feeling of foreignness suddenly rises up in me. I cannot
find my way back, I am shut out though I entreat earnestly and put
forth all my strength.
Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit
there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to
importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then.
I am a soldier, I must cling to that.
Wearily I stand up and look out of the window. Then I take one of
the books, intending to read, and turn over the leaves. But I put it
away and take out another. There are passages in it that have been
marked. I look, turn over the pages, take up fresh books. Already
they are piled up beside me. Speedily more join the heap, papers,
magazines, letters.
I stand there dumb. As before a judge.
Dejected.
Words, Words, Words--they do not reach me.
Slowly I place the books back in the shelves.
Nevermore.
Quietly, I go out of the room.
* *
Still I do not give up hope. I do not, indeed, go to my room any
more, but comfort myself with the thought that a few days are not
enough to judge by. Afterwards--later on--there is plenty of time
for that.
So I go over to see Mittelstaedt in the barracks, and we sit in his
room, there is an atmosphere about it that I do not like but with
which I am quite familiar.
Mittelstaedt has some news ready for me that electrifies me on the
spot. He tells me Kantorek has been called up as a territorial.
"Just think of it," says he, and takes out a couple of good cigars,
"I come back here from the hospital and bump right into him. He
stretches out his paw to me and bleats: 'Hullo Mittelstaedt, how are
you?'--I look at him and say: 'Territorial Kantorek, business is
business and schnapps is schnapps, you ought to know that well enough
yourself. Stand to attention when you speak to a superior officer.'
You should have seen his face! A cross between a dud and a pickled
cucumber. He tried once again to chum up. So I snubbed him a bit
harder. Then he brought up his biggest guns and asked
confidentially: 'Would you like me to use my influence so that you
can take an emergency-exam.?' He was trying to remind me of those
things, you know. Then I got mad and I reminded him of something
instead. 'Territorial Kantorek, two years ago you preached us into
enlisting; and among us there was one, Joseph Behm, who didn't want
to enlist. He was killed three months before he would have been
called up in the ordinary way. If it had not been for you he would
have lived just that much longer. And now: Dismiss. You will hear
from me later.' It was easy to get put in charge of his company.
First thing I did was to take him to the stores and fit him out with
a suitable equipment. You will see in a minute."
We go out to the parade ground. The company has fallen in.
Mittelstaedt stands them at ease and inspects.
Then I see Kantorek and am scarcely able to stifle my laughter. He
is wearing a faded blue tunic. On the back and in the sleeves there
are big dark patches. The overcoat must have belonged to a giant.
The black, worn breeches are just as much too short; they reach
barely halfway down his calf. The boots, tough old clod-hoppers,
with turned-up toes and laces at the side, are much too big for him.
But as a compensation the cap is too small, a terribly dirty, mean
little pill-box. The whole rig-out is just pitiful.
Mittelstaedt stops in front of him: "Territorial Kantorek, do you
call those buttons polished? You seem as though you can never learn.
Inadequate, Kantorek, quite inadequate----"
It makes me bubble with glee. In school Kantorek used to chasten
Mittelstaedt with exactly the same expression--"Inadequate,
Mittelstaedt, quite inadequate."
Mittelstaedt continues to upbraid him: "Look at Boettcher now,
there's a model for you to learn from."
I can hardly believe my eyes. Boettcher is there too, Boettcher, our
school porter. And he is a model! Kantorek shoots a glance at me as
if he would like to eat me. But I grin at him innocently, as though
I do not recognize him any more.
Nothing could look more ludicrous than his forage-cap and his
uniform. And this is the object before whom we used to stand in
anguish, as he sat up there enthroned at his desk, spearing at us
with his pencil for our mistakes in those irregular French verbs with
which afterwards we made so little headway in France. That is barely
two years ago--and now here stands Territorial Kantorek, the spell
quite broken, with bent knees, arms like pothooks, unpolished buttons
and that ludicrous rig-out--an impossible soldier. I cannot
reconcile this with the menacing figure at the schoolmaster's desk.
I wonder what I, the old soldier, would do if this skin full of woe
ever dared to say to me again: "Bäumer, give the imperfect of
'aller.'"
Then Mittelstaedt makes them practice skirmishing, and as a favour
appoints Kantorek squad leader.
Now in skirmishing the squad leader has always to keep twenty paces
in front of his squad; if the order comes "On the march, about turn,"
the line of skirmishers simply turns about, but the squad leader, who
now finds himself suddenly twenty paces in rear of the line, has to
rush up at the double and take his position again twenty paces in
front of the squad. That makes altogether forty paces double-march.
But no sooner has he arrived than the order "On the march, about
turn," comes again and he once more has to race at top speed another
forty paces to the other side. In this way the squad has made merely
the turn-about and a couple of paces while the squad-leader dashes
backwards and forwards like a fart on a curtain pole. That is one of
Himmelstoss' well-worn recipes.
Kantorek can hardly expect anything else from Mittelstaedt, for he
once messed up the latter's chance of promotion, and Mittelstaedt
would be a big fool not to make the best of such a good opportunity
as this, before he goes back to the front again. A man might well
die easier after the army has given him just one such stroke of luck.
In the meantime Kantorek is dashing up and down like a wild-boar.
After a while Mittelstaedt stops the skirmish and begins the very
important exercise of creeping.
On hands and knees, carrying his gun in regulation fashion, Kantorek
shoves his absurd figure over the sand immediately in front of us.
He is breathing hard, and his panting is music.
Mittelstaedt encourages Kantorek the Territorial with quotations from
Kantorek the school-master. "Territorial Kantorek, we have the good
fortune to live in a great age, we must all humble ourselves and for
once put aside bitterness."
Kantorek sweats and spits out a dirty piece of wood that has lodged
in his teeth.
Mittelstaedt stoops down and says reproachfully: "And in the trifles
never lose sight of the great adventure, Territorial Kantorek!"
It amazes me that Kantorek does not explode with a bang, especially
when, during physical exercises, Mittelstaedt copies him to
perfection, seizing him by the seat of his trousers as he is climbing
along the horizontal bar, so that he can just raise his chin above
the beam, and then starts to give him good advice. That is exactly
what Kantorek used to do to him at school.
The extra fatigues are next detailed off. "Kantorek and Boettcher,
bread fatigue! Take the handcart with you."
In a couple of minutes the two set off together pushing the barrow.
Kantorek in a fury walks with his head down. But the porter is
delighted to have scored light duty.
The bakehouse is away at the other end of the town, and the two must
go there and back through the whole length of it.
"They've done that a couple of times already," grins Mittelstaedt.
"There are still a few people waiting to see them."
"Excellent," I say, "but hasn't he reported you yet?"
"He did try. Our C.O. laughed like the deuce when he heard the
story. He hasn't any time for schoolmasters. Besides, I'm sweet
with his daughter."
"He'll mess up the examination for you."
"I don't care," says Mittelstaedt calmly. "Besides, his complaint
came to nothing because I could show that he had had hardly anything
but light duty."
"Couldn't you polish him up a bit?" I ask.
"He's too stupid, I couldn't be bothered," answers Mittelstaedt
contemptuously.
* *
What is leave?--A pause that only makes everything after it so much
worse. Already the sense of parting begins to intrude itself. My
mother watches me silently,--I know she counts the days;--every
morning she is sad. It is one day less. She has put away my pack,
she does not want to be reminded by it.
The hours pass quickly if a man broods. I pull myself together, and
go with my sister to the butcher's to get a pound of bones. That is
a great luxury and people line up early in the morning and stand
waiting. Many of them faint.
We have no luck. After waiting by turns for three hours the queue
disperses. The bones have not lasted out.
It is a good thing I get my rations. I bring them to my mother and
in that way we all get something decent to eat.
The days grow ever more strained and my mother's eyes more sorrowful.
Four days left now. I must go and see Kemmerich's mother.
* *
I cannot write that down. This quaking, sobbing woman who shakes me
and cries out on me: "Why are you living then, when he is dead?"--who
drowns me in tears and calls out: "What are you there for at all,
child, when you----"--who drops into a chair and wails: "Did you see
him? Did you see him then? How did he die?"
I tell her he was shot through the heart and died instantaneously.
She looks at me, she doubts me: "You lie. I know better. I have
felt how terribly he died. I have heard his voice at night, I have
felt his anguish--tell the truth, I want to know it, I must know it."
"No," I say, "I was beside him. He died at once."
She pleads with me gently: "Tell me. You must tell me. I know you
want to comfort me, but don't you see, you torment me far more than
if you told me the truth? I cannot bear the uncertainty. Tell me
how it was and even though it will be terrible, it will be far better
than what I have to think if you don't."
I will never tell her, she can make mincemeat out of me first. I
console her, but she strikes me as rather stupid all the same. Why
doesn't she stop worrying? Kemmerich will stay dead whether she
knows about it or not. When a man has seen so many dead he cannot
understand any longer why there should be so much anguish over a
single individual. So I say rather impatiently: "He died
immediately. He felt absolutely nothing at all. His face was quite
calm."
She is silent. Then she says slowly: "Will you swear it?"
"Yes."
"By everything that is sacred to you?"
Good God, what is there that is sacred to me?--such things change
pretty quickly with us.
"Yes, he died at once."
"Are you willing never to come back yourself, if it isn't true?"
"May I never come back if he wasn't killed instantaneously."
I would swear to anything. But she seems to believe me. She moans
and weeps steadily. I have to tell how it happened so I invent a
story and I almost believe it myself.
As I leave she kisses me and gives me a picture of him. In his
recruit's uniform he leans on a round rustic table with legs made of
birch branches. Behind him a wood is painted on a curtain, and on
the table stands a mug of beer.
* *
It is the last evening at home. Everyone is silent. I go to bed
early, I seize the pillow, press it against myself and bury my head
in it. Who knows if I will ever lie in a feather bed again?
Late in the night my mother comes into my room. She thinks I am
asleep, and I pretend to be so. To talk, to stay awake with one
another, it is too hard.
She sits long into the night although she is in pain and often
writhes. At last I can bear it no longer, and pretend I have just
wakened up.
"Go and sleep, mother, you will catch cold here."
"I can sleep enough later," she says.
I sit up. "I don't go straight back to the front, mother. I have to
do four weeks at the training camp. I may come over from there one
Sunday, perhaps."
She is silent. Then she asks gently: "Are you very much afraid?"
"No, mother."
"I would like to tell you to be on your guard against the women out
in France. They are no good."
Ah! Mother, Mother! You still think I am a child--why can I not put
my head in your lap and weep? Why have I always to be strong and
self-controlled? I would like to weep and be comforted, too, indeed
I am little more than a child; in the wardrobe still hang my short,
boy's trousers--it is such a little time ago, why is it over?
"Where we are there aren't any women, mother," I say as calmly as I
can.
"And be very careful at the front, Paul."
Ah, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with
you. What poor wretches we are!
"Yes, mother, I will."
"I will pray for you every day, Paul."
Ah! Mother, Mother! Let us rise up and go out, back through the
years, where the burden of all this misery lies on us no more, back
to you and me alone, Mother!
"Perhaps you can get a job that is not so dangerous."
"Yes, mother, perhaps I can get into the cook-house, that can easily
be done."
"You do it then, and if the others say anything----"
"That won't worry me, mother----"
She sighs. Her face is a white gleam in the darkness.
"Now you must go to sleep, mother."
She does not reply. I get up and wrap my cover round her shoulders.
She supports herself on my arm, she is in pain. And so I take her to
her room. I stay with her a little while.
"And you must get well again, mother, before I come back."
"Yes, yes, my child."
"You ought not to send your things to me, mother. We have plenty to
eat out there. You can make much better use of them here."
How destitute she lies there in her bed, she, that loves me more than
all the world. As I am about to leave, she says hastily: "I have two
pairs of under-pants for you. They are all wool. They will keep you
warm. You must not forget to put them in your pack."
Ah! Mother! I know what these underpants have cost you in waiting,
and walking, and begging! Ah! Mother, Mother! how can it be that I
must part from you? Who else is there that has any claim on me but
you. Here I sit and there you are lying, and we have so much to say,
that we could never say it.
"Good-night, mother."
"Good-night, my child."
The room is dark. I hear my mother's breathing, and the ticking of
the clock. Outside the window the wind blows and the chestnut trees
rustle.
On the landing I stumble over my pack which lies there already made
up, because I have to leave early in the morning.
I bite into my pillow. I grasp the iron rods of my bed with my
fists. I ought never to have come here. Out there I was indifferent
and often hopeless;--I will never be able to be so again. I was a
soldier, and now I am nothing but an agony for myself, for my mother,
for everything that is so comfortless and without end.
I ought never to have come on leave.
CHAPTER VIII
I already know the camp on the moors. It was here that Himmelstoss
gave Tjaden his education. But now I know hardly anyone here; as
ever, all is altered. There are only a few people that I have
occasionally met before.
I go through the routine mechanically. In the evenings I generally
go to the Soldiers' Home, where the newspapers are laid out, but
which I do not read; still, there is a piano there that I am glad
enough to play on. Two girls are in attendance, one of them is young.
The camp is surrounded with high barbed-wire fences. If we come back
late from the Soldiers' Home we have to show passes. But those who
are on good terms with the guard can get through, of course.
Between the junipers and the birch trees on the moor we practice
company-drill each day. It is bearable if one expects nothing
better. We advance at a run, fling ourselves down, and our panting
breath moves the stalks of the grasses and the flowers of the heather
to and fro. Looked at so closely one sees the fine sand is composed
of millions of the tiniest pebbles as clear as if they had been made
in a laboratory It is strangely inviting to dig one's hands into it.
But most beautiful are the woods with their line of birch trees.
Their colour changes with every minute. Now the stems gleam purest
white, and between them airy and silken, hangs the pastel-green of
the leaves; the next moment all changes to an opalescent blue, as the
shivering breezes pass down from the heights and touch the green
lightly away; and again in one place it deepens almost to black as a
cloud passes over the sun. And this shadow moves like a ghost
through the dim trunks and passes far out over the moor to the
sky--then the birches stand out again like gay banners on white
poles, with their red and gold patches of autumn-tinted leaves.
I often become so lost in the play of soft light and transparent
shadow, that I almost fail to hear the commands. It is when one is
alone that one begins to observe Nature and to love her. And here I
have not much companionship, and do not even desire it. We are too
little acquainted with one another to do more than joke a bit and
play poker or nap in the evenings.
Alongside our camp is the big Russian prison camp. It is separated
from us by a wire fence, but in spite of this the prisoners come
across to us. They seem nervous and fearful, though most of them are
big fellows with beards--they look like meek, scolded, St. Bernard
dogs.
They slink about our camp and pick over the garbage tins. One can
imagine what they find there. With us food is pretty scarce and none
too good at that--turnips cut into six pieces and boiled in water,
and unwashed carrot tops;--mouldy potatoes are tit-bits, and the
chief luxury is a thin rice soup in which float little bits of
beef-sinew, but these are cut up so small that they take a lot of
finding.
Everything gets eaten, notwithstanding, and if ever anyone is so well
off as not to want all his share, there are a dozen others standing
by ready to relieve him of it. Only the dregs that the ladle cannot
reach are tipped out and thrown into the garbage tins. Along with
that sometimes go a few turnip peelings, mouldy bread crusts and all
kinds of muck.
This thin, miserable, dirty garbage is the objective of the
prisoners. They pick it out of the stinking tins greedily and go off
with it under their blouses.
It is strange to see these enemies of ours so close up. They have
faces that make one think--honest peasant faces, broad foreheads,
broad noses, broad mouths, broad hands, and thick hair.
They ought to be put to threshing, reaping, and apple picking. They
look just as kindly as our own peasants in Friesland.
It is distressing to watch their movements, to see them begging for
something to eat. They are all rather feeble, for they only get
enough nourishment to keep them from starving. Ourselves we have not
had sufficient to eat for long enough. They have dysentery;
furtively many of them display the blood-stained tails of their
shirts. Their backs, their necks are bent, their knees sag, their
heads droop as they stretch out their hands and beg in the few words
of German that they know--beg with those soft, deep, musical voices,
that are like warm stoves and cosy rooms at home.
Some men there are who give them a kick, so that they fall over;--but
those are not many. The majority do nothing to them, just ignore
them. Occasionally, when they are too grovelling, it makes a man mad
and then he kicks them. If only they would not look at one so--
What great misery can be in two such small spots, no bigger than a
man's thumb--in their eyes!
They come over to the camp in the evenings and trade. They exchange
whatever they possess for bread. Often they have fair success,
because they have very good boots and ours are bad. The leather of
their knee boots is wonderfully soft, like suede. The peasants among
us who get tit bits sent from home can afford to trade. The price of
a pair of boots is about two or three loaves of army bread, or a loaf
of bread and a small, tough ham sausage.
But most of the Russians have long since parted with whatever things
they had. Now they wear only the most pitiful clothing, and try to
exchange little carvings and objects that they have made out of shell
fragments and copper driving bands. Of course, they don't get much
for such things, though they may have taken immense pains with
them--they go for a slice or two of bread. Our peasants are hard and
cunning when they bargain. They hold the piece of bread or sausage
right under the nose of the Russian till he grows pale with greed and
his eyes bulge and then he will give anything for it. The peasants
wrap up their booty with the utmost solemnity, and then get out their
big pocket knives, and slowly and deliberately cut off a slice of
bread for themselves from their supply and with every mouthful take a
piece of the good, tough sausage and so reward themselves with a good
feed. It is distressing to watch them take their afternoon meal
thus; one would like to crack them over their thick pates. They
rarely give anything away. How little we understand one another!
* *
I am often on guard over the Russians. In the darkness one sees
their forms move like sick storks, like great birds. They come close
up to the wire fence and lean their faces against it; their fingers
hook round the mesh. Often many stand side by side, and breathe the
wind that comes down from the moors and the forest.
They rarely speak and then only a few words. They are more human and
more brotherly towards one another, it seems to me, than we are. But
perhaps that is merely because they feel themselves to be more
unfortunate than us. Anyway the war is over so far as they are
concerned. But to wait for dysentery is not much of a life either.
The Territorials who are in charge of them say that they were much
more lively at first. They used to have intrigues among themselves,
as always happens, and it would often come to blows and knives. But
now they are quite apathetic, and listless; most of them do not
masturbate any more, they are so feeble, though occasionally it is so
bad that they do it barracks fashion.
They stand at the wire fence; sometimes one goes away and then
another at once takes his place in the line. Most of them are
silent; occasionally one begs a cigarette butt.
I see their dark forms, their beards move in the wind. I know
nothing of them except that they are prisoners, and that is exactly
what troubles me. Their life is obscure and guiltless;--if I could
know more of them, what their names are, how they live, what they are
waiting for, what are their burdens, then my emotion would have an
object and might become sympathy. But as it is I perceive behind
them only the suffering of the creature, the awful melancholy of life
and the pitilessness of men.
A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word
of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a
document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then
for years together that very crime on which formerly the world's
condemnation and severest penalty fell, becomes our highest aim. But
who can draw such a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with
their childlike faces and apostles' beards. Any non-commissioned
officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil
than they are to us. And yet we would shoot at them again and they
at us if they were free.
I am frightened: I dare think this way no more. This way lies the
abyss. It is not now the time; but I will not lose these thoughts, I
will keep them, shut them away until the war is ended. My heart
beats fast: this is the aim, the great, the sole aim, that I have
thought of in the trenches; that I have looked for as the only
possibility of existence after this annihilation of all human
feeling; this is a task that will make life afterward worthy of these
hideous years.
I take out my cigarettes, break each one in half and give them to the
Russians. They bow to me and then they light the cigarettes. Now
red points glow in every face. They comfort me; it looks as though
there were little windows in dark village cottages saying that behind
them are rooms full of peace.
* *
The days go by. On a foggy morning another of the Russians is
buried; almost every day one of them dies. I am on guard during the
burial. The prisoners sing a chorale, they sing in parts, and it
sounds almost as if there were no voices, but an organ far away on
the moor.
The burial is quickly over.
In the evening they stand again at the wire fence and the wind comes
down to them from the beech woods. The stars are cold.
I now know a few of those who speak a little German. There is a
musician amongst them, he says he used to be a violinist in Berlin.
When he hears that I can play the piano he fetches his violin and
plays. The others sit down and lean their backs against the fence.
He stands up and plays, sometimes he has that absent expression which
violinists get when they close their eyes; or again he sways the
instrument to the rhythm and smiles across to me.
He plays mostly folk songs and the others hum with him. They are
like a country of dark hills that sing far down under the ground.
The sound of the violin stands like a slender girl above it and is
clear and alone. The voices cease and the violin continues alone.
In the night it is so thin it sounds frozen; one must stand close up;
it would be much better in a room;--out here it makes a man grow sad.
* *
Because I have already had a long leave I get none on Sundays. So
the last Sunday before I go back to the front my father and eldest
sister come over to see me. All day we sit in the Soldiers' Home.
Where else could we go, we don't want to stay in the camp. About
midday we go for a walk on the moors.
The hours are a torture; we do not know what to talk about, so we
speak of my mother's illness. It is now definitely cancer, she is
already in the hospital and will be operated on shortly. The doctors
hope she will recover, but we have never heard of cancer being cured.
"Where is she then?" I ask.
"In the Luisa Hospital," says my father.
"In which class?"
"Third. We must wait till we know what the operation costs. She
wanted to be in the third herself. She said that then she would have
some company. And besides it is cheaper."
"So she is lying there with all those people. If only she could
sleep properly."
My father nods. His face is broken and full of furrows. My mother
has always been sickly; and though she has only gone to the hospital
when she has been compelled to, it has cost a great deal of money,
and my father's life has been practically given up to it.
"If only I knew how much the operation costs," says he.
"Have you not asked?"
"Not directly, I cannot do that--the surgeon might take it amiss and
that would not do, he must operate on mother."
Yes, I think bitterly, that's how it is with us, and with all poor
people. They don't dare to ask the price, but worry themselves
dreadfully beforehand about it; but the others, for whom it is not
important, they settle the price first as a matter of course. And
the doctor does not take it amiss from them.
"And the dressings afterwards are so expensive," says my father.
"Doesn't the Invalid's Fund pay anything toward it, then?" I ask.
"Mother has been ill too long."
"Have you any money at all?"
He shakes his head: "No, but I can do some overtime."
I know. He will stand at his desk folding and pasting and cutting
until twelve o'clock at night. At eight o'clock in the evening he
will eat some of the miserable rubbish they get in exchange for their
food tickets, then he will take a powder for his headache and work on.
In order to cheer him up a bit I tell him a few stories, soldiers'
jokes, and the like, about generals and sergeant-majors.
Afterwards I accompany them both to the railway station. They give
me a pot of jam and a bag of potato-cakes that my mother has made for
me.
Then they go off and I return to the camp.
In the evening I spread the jam on the cakes and eat some. But I
have no taste for them. So I go out to give them to the Russians.
Then it occurs to me that my mother cooked them herself and that she
was probably in pain as she stood before the hot stove. I put the
bag back in my pack and take only two cakes to the Russians.
CHAPTER IX
We travel for several days. The first aeroplanes appear in the sky.
We roll on past transport lines. Guns, guns. The light railway
picks us up. I search for my regiment. No one knows exactly where
it lies. Somewhere or other I put up for the night, somewhere or
other I receive provisions and a few vague instructions. And so with
my pack and my rifle I set out again on the way.
By the time I come up they are no longer in that devastated place. I
hear we have become one of the flying divisions that are pushed in
wherever it is hottest. That does not sound cheerful to me. They
tell me of heavy losses that we have been having. I inquire after
Kat and Albert. No one knows anything of them.
I search farther and wander about here and there; it is a wonderful
feeling. One night and then another I camp out like a Red Indian.
Then at last I get some definite information, and by the afternoon I
am able to report to the Orderly Room.
The sergeant-major detains me there. The company comes back in two
days' time. There is no object in sending me up now.
"What was it like on leave?" he asks, "pretty good, eh?"
"In parts," I say.
"Yes," he sighs, "yes, if a man didn't have to come away again. The
second half is always rather messed up by that."
I loaf around until the company comes back in the early morning,
grey, dirty, soured, and gloomy. Then I jump up, push in amongst
them, my eyes searching. There is Tjaden, there is Müller blowing
his nose, and there are Kat and Kropp. We arrange our sacks of straw
side by side. I have an uneasy conscience when I look at them, and
yet without any good reason. Before we turn in I bring out the rest
of the potato-cakes and jam so that they can have some too.
The two outer cakes are mouldy, still it is possible to eat them. I
keep those for myself and give the fresh ones to Kat and Kropp.
Kat chews and says: "These are from your mother?"
I nod.
"Good," says he, "I can tell by the taste."
I could almost weep. I can hardly control myself any longer. But it
will soon be all right again back here with Kat and Albert. This is
where I belong.
"You've been lucky," whispers Kropp to me before we drop off to
sleep, "they say we are going to Russia."
To Russia. It's not much of a war over there.
In the distance the front thunders. The walls of the hut rattle.
* *
There's a great deal of polishing being done. We are inspected at
every turn. Everything that is torn is exchanged for new. I score a
spotless new tunic out of it and Kat, of course, an entire outfit. A
rumour is going round that there may be peace, but the other story is
more likely--that we are bound for Russia. Still, what do we need
new things for in Russia? At last it leaks out--the Kaiser is coming
to review us. Hence all the inspections.
For eight whole days one would suppose we were in a base-camp, there
is so much drill and fuss. Everyone is peevish and touchy, we do not
take kindly to all this polishing, much less to parades. Such things
exasperate a soldier more than the front-line.
At last the moment arrives. We stand up stiff and the Kaiser
appears. We are curious to see what he looks like. He stalks along
the line, and I am really rather disappointed; judging from his
pictures I imagined him to be bigger and more powerfully built, and
above all to have a thundering voice.
He distributes Iron Crosses and speaks to this man and to that. Then
we march off.
Afterwards we discuss it. Tjaden says with astonishment:
"So that is the All-Highest! And everyone, bar nobody, has to stand
up stiff in front of him!" He meditates: "Hindenburg too, he has to
stand up stiff to him, eh?"
"Sure," says Kat.
Tjaden hasn't finished yet. He thinks for a while and then asks:
"And would a king have to stand up stiff to an emperor?"
None of us is quite sure about it, but we don't suppose so. They are
both so exalted that standing strictly to attention is probably not
insisted on.
"What rot you do hatch out," says Kat. "The main point is that you
have to stand stiff yourself."
But Tjaden is quite fascinated. His otherwise prosy fancy is blowing
bubbles. "But look," he announces, "I simply can't believe that an
emperor has to go to the latrine the same as I have."
"You can bet your boots on it."
"Four and a half-wit make seven," says Kat. "You've got a maggot in
your brain, Tjaden, just you run along to the latrine quick, and get
your head clear, so that you don't talk like a two-year-old."
Tjaden disappears.
"But what I would like to know," says Albert, "is whether there would
not have been a war if the Kaiser had said No."
"I'm sure of this much," I interject, "he was against it from the
first."
"Well, if not him alone, then perhaps if twenty or thirty people in
the world had said No."
"That's probable," I agree, "but they damned well said Yes."
"It's queer, when one thinks about it," goes on Kropp, "we are here
to protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect
their fatherland. Now, who's in the right?"
"Perhaps both," say I, without believing it.
"Yes, well now," pursues Albert, and I see that he means to drive me
into a corner, "but our professors and parsons and newspapers say
that we are the only ones that are right, and let's hope so;--but the
French professors and parsons and newspapers say that the right is on
their side, now what about that?"
"That I don't know," I say, "but whichever way it is there's war all
the same and every month more countries coming in."
Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the
conversation, wondering just how a war gets started.
"Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with
a slight air of superiority.
Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. "A country? I don't follow. A
mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river,
or a wood, or a field of wheat."
"Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?"
growls Kropp, "I don't mean that at all. One people offends the
other----"
"Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, "I don't
feel myself offended."
"Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, "it doesn't apply to
tramps like you."
"Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all
laugh.
"Ach, man! he means the people as a whole, the State----" exclaims
Müller.
"State, State"--Tjaden snaps his fingers contemptuously, "Gendarmes,
police, taxes, that's your State;--if that's what you are talking
about, no thank you."
"That's right," says Kat, "you've said something for once, Tjaden.
State and home-country, there's a big difference."
"But they go together," insists Kropp, "without the State there
wouldn't be any home-country."
"True, but just you consider, almost all of us are simple folk. And
in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor
clerks. Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker
want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers. I had never seen a
Frenchman before I came here, and it will be just the same with the
majority of Frenchmen as regards us. They weren't asked about it any
more than we were."
"Then what exactly is the war for?" asks Tjaden.
Kat shrugs his shoulders. "There must be some people to whom the war
is useful."
"Well, I'm not one of them," grins Tjaden.
"Not you, nor anybody else here."
"Who are they then?" persists Tjaden. "It isn't any use to the
Kaiser either. He has everything he can want already."
"I'm not so sure about that," contradicts Kat, "he has not had a war
up till now. And every full-grown emperor requires at least one war,
otherwise he wouldn't become famous. You look in your school books."
"And generals too," adds Detering, "they become famous through war."
"Even more famous than emperors," adds Kat.
"There are other people back behind there who profit by the war,
that's certain," growls Detering.
"I think it is more a kind of fever," says Albert. "No one in
particular wants it, and then all at once there it is. We didn't
want the war, the others say the same thing--and yet half the world
is in it all the same."
"But there are more lies told by the other side than by us," say I;
"just think of those pamphlets the prisoners have on them, where it
says that we eat Belgian children. The fellows who write that ought
to go and hang themselves. They are the real culprits."
Müller gets up. "Anyway, it is better that the war is here instead
of in Germany. Just you take a look at the shell-holes."
"True," assents Tjaden, "but no war at all would be better still."
He is quite proud of himself because he has for once scored over us
volunteers. And his opinion is quite typical here, one meets it time
and again, and there is nothing with which one can properly counter
it, because that is the limit of their comprehension of the factors
involved. The national feeling of the tommy resolves itself into
this--here he is. But that is the end of it; everything else from
joining up onwards he criticizes from a practical point of view.
Albert lies down on the grass and growls angrily: "The best thing is
not to talk about the rotten business."
"It won't make any difference, that's sure," agrees Kat.
As for the windfall, we have to return almost all the new things and
take back our old rags again. The good ones were merely for the
inspection.
* *
Instead of going to Russia, we go up the line again. On the way we
pass through a devastated wood with the tree trunks shattered and the
ground ploughed up.
At several places there are tremendous craters. "Great guns,
something's hit that," I say to Kat.
"Trench mortars," he replies, and then points up at one of the trees.
In the branches dead men are hanging. A naked soldier is squatting
in the fork of a tree, he still has his helmet on, otherwise he is
entirely unclad. There is only half of him sitting up there, the top
half, the legs are missing.
"What can that mean?" I ask.
"He's been blown out of his clothes," mutters Tjaden.
"It's funny," says Kat, "we have seen that a couple of times now. If
a mortar gets you it blows you almost clean out of your clothes.
It's the concussion that does it."
I search around. And so it is. Here hang bits of uniform, and
somewhere else is plastered a bloody mess that was once a human limb.
Over there lies a body with nothing but a piece of the underpants on
one leg and the collar of the tunic around its neck. Otherwise it is
naked and the clothes are hanging up in the tree. Both arms are
missing as though they had been pulled out. I discover one of them
twenty yards off in a shrub.
The dead man lies on his face. There, where the arm wounds are, the
earth is black with blood. Underfoot the leaves are scratched up as
though the man had been kicking.
"That's no joke, Kat," say I.
"No more is a shell splinter in the belly," he replies, shrugging his
shoulders.
"But don't get tender-hearted," says Tjaden.
All this can only have happened a little while ago, the blood is
still fresh. As everybody we see there is dead we do not waste any
more time, but report the affair at the next stretcher-bearers' post.
After all it is not our business to take these stretcher-bearers'
jobs away from them.
* *
A patrol has to be sent out to discover just how far the enemy
position is advanced. Since my leave I feel a certain strange
attachment to the other fellows, and so I volunteer to go with them.
We agree on a plan, slip out through the wire and then divide and
creep forward separately. After a while I find a shallow shell-hole
and crawl into it. From here I peer forward.
There is moderate machine-gun fire. It sweeps across from all
directions, not very heavy, but always sufficient to make one keep
down.
A parachute star-shell opens out. The ground lies stark in the pale
light, and then the darkness shuts down again blacker than ever. In
the trenches we were told there were black troops in front of us.
That is nasty, it is hard to see them; they are very good at
patrolling, too. And oddly enough they are often quite stupid; for
instance, both Kat and Kropp were once able to shoot down a black
enemy patrol because the fellows in their enthusiasm for cigarettes
smoked while they were creeping about. Kat and Albert had simply to
aim at the glowing ends of the cigarettes.
A bomb or something lands close beside me. I have not heard it
coming and am terrified. At the same moment a senseless fear takes
hold on me. Here I am alone and almost helpless in the
dark--perhaps two other eyes have been watching me for a long while
from another shell-hole in front of me, and a bomb lies ready to blow
me to pieces. I try to pull myself together. It is not my first
patrol and not a particularly risky one. But it is the first since
my leave, and besides, the lie of the land is still rather strange to
me.
I tell myself that my alarm is absurd, that there is probably nothing
at all there in the darkness watching me, because otherwise the
missile would not have landed so flat.
It is in vain. In whirling confusion my thoughts hum in my brain--I
hear the warning voice of my mother, I see the Russians with the
flowing beards leaning against the wire fence, I have a bright
picture of a canteen with stools, of a cinema in Valenciennes;
tormented, terrified, in my imagination I see the grey, impalpable
muzzle of a rifle which moves noiselessly before me whichever way I
try to turn my head. The sweat breaks out from every pore.
I still continue to lie in my shallow bowl. I look at the time; only
a few minutes have passed. My forehead is wet, the sockets of my
eyes are damp, my hands tremble, and I am panting softly. It is
nothing but an awful spasm of fear, a simple animal fear of poking
out my head and crawling on farther.
All my efforts subside like froth into the one desire to be able just
to stay lying there. My limbs are glued to the earth. I make a vain
attempt;--they refuse to come away. I press myself down on the
earth, I cannot go forward, I make up my mind to stay lying there.
But immediately the wave floods over me anew, a mingled sense of
shame, of remorse, and yet at the same time of security. I raise
myself up a little to take a look around.
My eyes burn with staring into the dark. A star-shell goes up;--I
duck down again.
I wage a wild and senseless fight, I want to get out of the hollow
and yet slide back into it again, I say "You must, it is your
comrades, it is not any idiotic command," and again: "What does it
matter to me, I have only one life to lose----"
That is the result of all this leave, I reproach myself bitterly.
But I cannot convince myself, I become terribly faint. I raise
myself slowly and reach forward with my arms, dragging my body after
me and then lie on the edge of the shell-hole, half in and half out.
There I hear sounds and drop back. Suspicious sounds can be detected
clearly despite the noise of the artillery-fire. I listen; the sound
is behind me. They are our people moving along the trench. Now I
hear muffled voices. To judge by the tone that might be Kat talking.
At once a new warmth flows through me. These voices, these few quiet
words, these footsteps in the trench behind me recall me at a bound
from the terrible loneliness and fear of death by which I had been
almost destroyed. They are more to me than life, these voices, they
are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the
strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the
voices of my comrades.
I am no longer a shuddering speck of existence, alone in the
darkness;--I belong to them and they to me, we all share the same
fear and the same life, we are nearer than lovers, in a simpler, a
harder way; I could bury my face in them, in these voices, these
words that have saved me and will stand by me.
* *
Cautiously I glide out over the edge and snake my way forward. I
shuffle along on all fours a bit farther, I keep track of my
bearings, look around me and observe the distribution of the gunfire
so as to be able to find my way back. Then I try to get in touch
with the others.
I am still afraid, but it is an intelligent fear, an extraordinarily
heightened caution. The night is windy and shadows flit hither and
thither in the flicker of the gunfire. It reveals too little and too
much. Often I peer ahead, but always for nothing. Thus I advance a
long way and then turn back in a wide curve. I have not established
touch with the others. Every yard nearer our trench fills me with
confidence;--and with haste, too. It would be bad to get lost now.
Then a new fear lays hold of me. I can no longer remember the
direction. Quiet, I squat in a shell-hole and try to locate myself.
More than once it has happened that some fellow has jumped joyfully
into a trench only then to discover that it was the wrong one.
After a little time I listen again, but still I am not sure. The
confusion of shell-holes now seems so bewildering that I can no
longer tell in my agitation which way I should go. Perhaps I am
crawling parallel to the lines, and that might go on for ever. So I
crawl round once again in a wide curve.
These damned rockets! They seem to burn for an hour, and a man
cannot make the least movement without bringing the bullets whistling
round.
But there is nothing for it, I must get out. Falteringly I work my
way farther, I move off over the ground like a crab and rip my hands
sorely on the jagged splinters, as sharp as razor blades. Often I
think that the sky is becoming lighter on the horizon, but it may be
merely my imagination. Then gradually I realize that to crawl in the
right direction is a matter of life or death.
A shell crashes. Almost immediately two others. And then it begins
in earnest. A bombardment. Machine-guns rattle. Now there is
nothing for it but to stay lying low. Apparently an attack is
coming. Everywhere the rockets shoot up. Unceasing.
I lie huddled in a large shell-hole, my legs in the water up to the
belly. When the attack starts I will let myself fall into the water,
with my face as deep in the mud as I can keep it without suffocating.
I must pretend to be dead.
Suddenly I hear the barrage lift. At once I slip down into the
water, my helmet on the nape of my neck and my mouth just clear so
that I can get a breath of air.
I lie motionless;--somewhere something clanks, it stamps and stumbles
nearer--all my nerves become taut and icy. It clatters over me and
away, the first wave has passed. I have but this one shattering
thought: What will you do if someone jumps into your shell-hole?--
Swiftly I pull out my little dagger, grasp it fast and bury it in my
hand once again under the mud. If anyone jumps in here I will go for
him; it hammers in my forehead; at once, stab him clean through the
throat, so that he cannot call out; that's the only way; he will be
just as frightened as I am, when in terror we fall upon one another,
then I must be first.
Now our batteries are firing. A shell lands near me. That makes me
savage with fury, all it needs now is to be killed by our own shells;
I curse and grind my teeth in the mud; it is a raving frenzy; in the
end all I can do is groan and pray.
The crash of the shells bursts in my ears. If our fellows make a
counter-raid I will be saved. I press my head against the earth and
listen to the muffled thunder, like the explosions of quarrying--and
raise it again to listen for the sounds on top.
The machine-guns rattle. I know our barbed wire entanglements are
strong and almost undamaged;--parts of them are charged with a
powerful electric current. The rifle fire increases. They have not
broken through; they have to retreat.
I sink down again, huddled, strained to the uttermost. The banging,
the creeping, the clanging becomes audible. One single cry yelling
amongst it all. They are raked with fire, the attack is repulsed.
* *
Already it has become somewhat lighter. Steps hasten over me. The
first. Gone. Again, another. The rattle of machine-guns becomes an
unbroken chain. Just as I am about to turn round a little, something
heavy stumbles, and with a crash a body falls over me into the
shell-hole, slips down, and lies across me----
I do not think at all, I make no decision--I strike madly home, and
feel only how the body suddenly convulses, then becomes limp, and
collapses. When I recover myself, my hand is sticky and wet.
The man gurgles. It sounds to me as though he bellows, every gasping
breath is like a cry, a thunder--but it is only my heart pounding. I
want to stop his mouth, stuff it with earth, stab him again, he must
be quiet, he is betraying me; now at last I regain control of myself,
but have suddenly become so feeble that I cannot any more lift my
hand against him.
So I crawl away to the farthest corner and stay there, my eyes glued
on him, my hand grasping the knife--ready, if he stirs, to spring at
him again. But he won't do so any more, I can hear that already in
his gurgling.
I can see him indistinctly. I have but one desire, to get away. If
it is not soon it will be too light; it will be difficult enough now.
Then as I try to raise up my head I see it is impossible already.
The machine-gun fire so sweeps the ground that I would be shot
through and through before I could make one jump.
I test it once with my helmet, which I take off and hold up to find
out the level of the shots. The next moment it is knocked out of my
hand by a bullet. The fire is sweeping very low over the ground. I
am not far enough from the enemy line to escape being picked off by
one of the snipers if I attempt to get away.
The light increases. Burning I wait for our attack. My hands are
white at the knuckles, I clench them so tightly in my longing for the
fire to cease so that my comrades may come.
Minute after minute trickles away. I dare not look again at the dark
figure in the shell-hole. With an effort I look past it and wait,
wait. The bullets hiss, they make a steel net, never ceasing, never
ceasing.
Then I notice my bloody hand and suddenly feel nauseated. I take
some earth and rub the skin with it, now my hand is muddy and the
blood cannot be seen any more.
The fire does not diminish. It is equally heavy from both sides.
Our fellows have probably given me up for lost long ago.
* *
It is early morning, clear and grey. The gurgling continues, I stop
my ears, but soon take my fingers away again, because then I cannot
hear the other sound.
The figure opposite me moves. I shrink together and involuntarily
look at it. Then my eyes remain glued to it. A man with a small
pointed beard lies there, his head is fallen to one side, one arm is
half-bent, his head rests helplessly upon it. The other hand lies on
his chest, it is bloody.
He is dead, I say to myself, he must be dead, he doesn't feel
anything any more; it is only the body that is gurgling there. Then
the head tries to raise itself, for a moment the groaning becomes
louder, his forehead sinks back upon his arm. The man is not dead,
he is dying, but he is not dead. I drag myself toward him, hesitate,
support myself on my hands, creep a bit farther, wait, again a
terrible journey of three yards, a long, a terrible journey. At last
I am beside him.
Then he opens his eyes. He must have heard me and gazes at me with a
look of utter terror. The body lies still, but in the eyes there is
such an extraordinary expression of flight that for a moment I think
they have power enough to carry the body off with them. Hundreds of
miles away with one bound. The body is still, perfectly still,
without sound, the gurgle has ceased, but the eyes cry out, yell, all
the life is gathered together in them for one tremendous effort to
flee, gathered together there in a dreadful terror of death, of me.
My legs give way and I drop on my elbows. "No, no," I whisper.
The eyes follow me. I am powerless to move so long as they are there.
Then his hand slips slowly from his breast, only a little bit, it
sinks just a few inches, but this movement breaks the power of the
eyes. I bend forward, shake my head and whisper: "No, no, no," I
raise one hand, I must show him that I want to help him, I stroke his
forehead.
The eyes shrink back as the hand comes, then they lose their stare,
the eyelids droop lower, the tension is past. I open his collar and
place his head more comfortably upright.
His mouth stands half open, it tries to form words. The lips are
dry. My water bottle is not there. I have not brought it with me.
But there is water in the mud, down at the bottom of the crater. I
climb down, take out my handkerchief, spread it out, push it under
and scoop up the yellow water that strains through into the hollow of
my hand.
He gulps it down. I fetch some more. Then I unbutton his tunic in
order to bandage him if it is possible. In any case I must do it, so
that if the fellows over there capture me they will see that I wanted
to help him, and so will not shoot me. He tries to resist, but his
hand is too feeble. The shirt is stuck and will not come away, it is
buttoned at the back. So there is nothing for it but to cut it off.
I look for the knife and find it again. But when I begin to cut the
shirt the eyes open once more and the cry is in them again and the
demented expression, so that I must close them, press them shut and
whisper: "I want to help you, Comrade, camerade, camerade,
camerade----" eagerly repeating the word, to make him understand.
There are three stabs. My field dressing covers them, the blood runs
out under it, I press it tighter; there; he groans.
That is all I can do. Now we must wait, wait.
* *
These hours.... The gurgling starts again--but how slowly a man
dies! For this I know--he cannot be saved. Indeed, I have tried to
tell myself that he will be, but at noon this pretence breaks down
and melts before his groans. If only I had not lost my revolver
crawling about, I would shoot him. Stab him I cannot.
By noon I am groping on the outer limits of reason. Hunger devours
me, I could almost weep for something to eat, I cannot struggle
against it. Again and again I fetch water for the dying man and
drink some myself.
This is the first man I have killed with my hands, whom I can see
close at hand, whose death is my doing. Kat and Kropp and Müller
have experienced it already, when they have hit someone; it happens
to many, in hand-to-hand fighting especially--
But every gasp lays my heart bare. This dying man has time with him,
he has an invisible dagger with which he stabs me: Time and my
thoughts.
I would give much if he would but stay alive. It is hard to lie here
and to have to see and hear him.
In the afternoon, about three, he is dead.
I breathe freely again. But only for a short time. Soon the silence
is more unbearable than the groans. I wish the gurgling were there
again, gasping, hoarse, now whistling softly and again hoarse and
loud.
It is mad, what I do. But I must do something. I prop the dead man
up again so that he lies comfortably although he feels nothing any
more. I close his eyes. They are brown, his hair is black and a bit
curly at the sides.
The mouth is full and soft beneath his moustache; the nose is
slightly arched, the skin brownish; it is now not so pale as it was
before, when he was still alive. For a moment the face seems almost
healthy;--then it collapses suddenly into the strange face of the
dead that I have so often seen, strange faces, all alike.
No doubt his wife still thinks of him; she does not know what has
happened. He looks as if he would often have written to her;--she
will still be getting mail from him--To-morrow, in a week's
time--perhaps even a stray letter a month hence. She will read it,
and in it he will be speaking to her.
My state is getting worse, I can no longer control my thoughts. What
would his wife look like? Like the little brunette on the other side
of the canal? Does she belong to me now? Perhaps by this act she
becomes mine. I wish Kantorek were sitting here beside me. If my
mother could see me----. The dead man might have had thirty more
years of life if only I had impressed the way back to our trench more
sharply on my memory. If only he had run two yards farther to the
left, he might now be sitting in the trench over there and writing a
fresh letter to his wife.
But I will get no further that way; for that is the fate of all of
us: if Kemmerich's leg had been six inches to the right; if Haie
Westhus had bent his back three inches further forward----
* *
The silence spreads. I talk and must talk. So I speak to him and
say to him: "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in
here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you
were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind
and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I
stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me.
I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now
I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me,
comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that
you are just poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as
anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the
same dying and the same agony--. Forgive me, comrade; how could you
be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you
could be my brother just like Kat and Albert. Take twenty years of
my life, comrade, and stand up--take more, for I do not know what I
can even attempt to do with it now."
It is quiet, the front is still except for the crackle of rifle fire.
The bullets rain over, they are not fired haphazard, but shrewdly
aimed from all sides. I cannot get out.
"I will write to your wife," I say hastily to the dead man, "I will
write to her, she must hear it from me, I will tell her everything I
have told you, she shall not suffer, I will help her, and your
parents too, and your child----"
His tunic is half open. The pocket-book is easy to find. But I
hesitate to open it. In it is the book with his name. So long as I
do not know his name perhaps I may still forget him, time will
obliterate it, this picture. But his name, it is a nail that will be
hammered into me and never come out again. It has the power to
recall this for ever, it will always come back and stand before me.
Irresolutely I take the wallet in my hand. It slips out of my hand
and falls open. Some pictures and letters drop out. I gather them
up and want to put them back again, but the strain I am under, the
uncertainty, the hunger, the danger, these hours with the dead man
have confused me, I want to hasten the relief, to intensify and to
end the torture, as one strikes an unendurably painful hand against
the trunk of a tree, regardless of everything.
There are portraits of a woman and a little girl, small amateur
photographs taken against an ivy-clad wall. Along with them are
letters. I take them out and try to read them. Most of it I do not
understand, it is so hard to decipher and I know scarcely any French.
But each word I translate pierces me like a shot in the chest;--like
a stab in the chest.
My brain is taxed beyond endurance. But I realize this much, that I
will never dare to write to these people as I intended. Impossible.
I look at the portraits once more; they are clearly not rich people.
I might send them money anonymously if I earn anything later on. I
seize upon that, it is at least something to hold on to. This dead
man is bound up with my life, therefore I must do everything, promise
everything, in order to save myself; I swear blindly that I mean to
live only for his sake and his family, with wet lips I try to placate
him--and deep down in me lies the hope that I may buy myself off in
this way and perhaps even yet get out of this; it is a little
stratagem: if only I am allowed to escape, then I will see to it. So
I open the book and read slowly:--Gerard Duval, compositor.
With the dead man's pencil I write the address on an envelope, then
swiftly thrust everything back into his tunic.
I have killed the printer, Gerard Duval. I must be a printer, I
think confusedly, be a printer, printer----
* *
By afternoon I am calmer. My fear was groundless. The name troubles
me no more. The madness passes. "Comrade," I say to the dead man,
but I say it calmly, "To-day you, to-morrow me. But if I come out of
it, comrade, I will fight against this, that has struck us both down;
from you, taken life--and from me--? Life also. I promise you,
comrade. It shall never happen again."
The sun strikes low. I am stupefied with exhaustion and hunger.
Yesterday is like a fog to me, there is no hope of getting out of
this yet. I fall into a doze and do not at first realize that
evening is approaching. The twilight comes. It seems to me to come
quickly now. One hour more. If it were summer, it would be three
hours more. One hour more.
Now suddenly I begin to tremble; something might happen in the
interval. I think no more of the dead man, he is of no consequence
to me now. With one bound the lust to live flares up again and
everything that has filled my thoughts goes down before it. Now,
merely to avert any ill-luck, I babble mechanically: "I will fulfil
everything, fulfil everything I have promised you----" but already I
know that I shall not do so.
Suddenly it occurs to me that my own comrades may fire on me as I
creep up; they do not know I am coming. I will call out as soon as I
can so that they will recognize me. I will stay lying in front of
the trench until they answer me.
The first star. The front remains quiet. I breathe deeply and talk
to myself in my excitement: "No foolishness now, Paul--Quiet, Paul,
quiet--then you will be saved, Paul." When I use my Christian name
it works as though someone else spoke to me, it has more power.
The darkness grows. My excitement subsides, I wait cautiously until
the first rocket goes up. Then I crawl out of the shell-hole. I
have forgotten the dead man. Before me lies the on-coming night and
the pale gleaming field. I fix my eye on a shell-hole; the moment
the light dies I scurry over into it, grope farther, spring into the
next, duck down, scramble onward.
I come nearer. There, by the light of a rocket I see something move
in the wire, then it stiffens and lies still. Next time I see it
again, yes, they are men from our trench. But I am suspicious until
I recognize our helmets. Then I call. And immediately an answer
rings out, my name: "Paul--Paul----"
I call again in answer. It is Kat and Albert who have come out with
a stretcher to look for me.
"Are you wounded?"
"No, no----"
We drop into the trench. I ask for something to eat and wolf it
down. Müller gives me a cigarette. In a few words I tell what
happened. There is nothing new about it; it happens quite often.
The night attack is the only unusual feature of the business. In
Russia Kat once lay for two days behind the enemy lines before he
could make his way back.
I do not mention the dead printer.
But by next morning I can keep it to myself no longer. I must tell
Kat and Albert. They both try to calm me. "You can't do anything
about it. What else could you have done? That is what you are here
for."
I listen to them and feel comforted, reassured by their presence. It
was mere drivelling nonsense that I talked out there in the
shell-hole.
"Look there for instance," points Kat.
On the fire-step stand some snipers. They rest their rifles with
telescopic sights on the parapet and watch the enemy front. Once and
again a shot cracks out.
Then we hear the cry: "That's found a billet!" "Did you see how he
leapt in the air?" Sergeant Oellrich turns round proudly and scores
his point. He heads the shooting list for to-day with three
unquestionable hits.
"What do you say to that?" asks Kat.
I nod.
"If he keeps that up he will get a little coloured bird for his
buttonhole by this evening," says Albert.
"Or rather he will soon be made acting-sergeant-major," says Kat.
We look at one another. "I would not do it," I say.
"All the same," says Kat, "it's very good for you to see it just now."
Sergeant Oellrich returns to the fire-step. The muzzle of his rifle
searches to and fro.
"You don't need to lose any more sleep over your affair," nods Albert.
And now I hardly understand it myself any more.
"It was only because I had to lie there with him so long," I say.
"After all, war is war."
Oellrich's rifle cracks out sharp and dry.
CHAPTER X
We have dropped in for a good job. Eight of us have to guard a
village that has been abandoned because it is being shelled too
heavily.
In particular we have to watch the supply dump as that is not yet
empty. We are supposed to provision ourselves from the same store.
We are just the right people for that;--Kat, Albert, Müller, Tjaden,
Detering, our whole gang is there. Haie is dead, though. But we are
mighty lucky all the same, all the other squads have had more
casualties than we have.
We select, as a dug-out, a reinforced concrete cellar into which
steps lead down from above. The entrance is protected by a separate
concrete wall.
Now we develop an immense industry. This is an opportunity not only
to stretch one's legs, but to stretch one's soul also. We make the
best use of such opportunities. The war is too desperate to allow us
to be sentimental for long. That is only possible so long as things
are not going too badly. After all, we cannot afford to be anything
but matter-of-fact. So matter-of-fact, indeed, that I often shudder
when a thought from the days before the war comes momentarily into my
head. But it does not stay long.
We have to take things as lightly as we can, so we make the most of
every opportunity, and nonsense stands stark and immediate beside
horror. It cannot be otherwise, that is how we hearten ourselves.
So we zealously set to work to create an idyll--an idyll of eating
and sleeping, of course.
The floor is first covered with mattresses which we haul in from the
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 samples 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
alone made it possible; we would have run even if our feet had been
shot off;--we would have run on the stumps.
I can still crawl a little. I call out to a passing ambulance wagon
which picks us up. It is full of wounded. There is an army medical
lance-corporal with it who sticks an anti-tetanus needle into our
chests.
At the dressing station we arrange matters so that we lie side by
side. They give us a thin soup which we spoon down greedily and
scornfully, because we are accustomed to better times but are hungry
all the same.
"Now for home, Albert," I say.
"Let's hope so," he replies, "I only wish I knew what I've got."
The pain increases. The bandages burn like fire. We drink and
drink, one glass of water after another.
"How far above the knee am I hit?" asks Kropp.
"At least four inches, Albert," I answer. Actually it is perhaps one.
"I've made up my mind," he says after a while, "if they take off my
leg, I'll put an end to it. I won't go through life as a cripple."
So we lie there with our thoughts and wait.
* *
In the evening we are hauled on to the chopping-block. I am
frightened and think quickly what I ought to do; for everyone knows
that the surgeons in the dressing stations amputate on the slightest
provocation. Under the great pressure of business that is much
simpler than complicated patching. I think of Kemmerich. Whatever
happens I will not let them chloroform me, even if I have to crack a
couple of their skulls.
It is all right. The surgeon pokes around in the wound and a
blackness comes before my eyes. "Don't carry on so," he says
gruffly, and hacks away. The instruments gleam in the bright light
like malevolent animals. The pain is insufferable. Two orderlies
hold my arms fast, but I break loose with one of them and try to
crash into the surgeon's spectacles just as he notices and springs
back. "Chloroform the scoundrel," he roars madly.
Then I become quiet. "Pardon me, Herr Doctor, I will keep still, but
do not chloroform me."
"Well now," he cackles and takes up his instrument again. He is a
fair fellow, not more than thirty years old, with scars and
disgusting gold spectacles. Now I see that he is tormenting me, he
is merely raking about in the wound and looking up surreptitiously at
me over his glasses. My hands squeeze around the grips, I'll kick
the bucket before he will get a squeak out of me.
He has fished out a piece of shell and tosses it to me. Apparently
he is pleased at my self-control, for he seems to be more considerate
of me now and says: "To-morrow you'll be off home." Then I am put in
plaster. When I am back again with Kropp I tell him that apparently
a hospital train comes in to-morrow morning.
"We must work the army medical sergeant-major so that we can keep
together, Albert."
I manage to slip the sergeant-major two of my cigars with
belly-bands, and then tip the word to him. He smells the cigars and
says: "Have you got any more of them?"
"Another good handful," I say, "and my comrade," I point to Kropp,
"he has some as well. We might possibly be glad to hand them to you
out of the window of the hospital train in the morning."
He understands, of course, smells them once again and says: "Done."
We cannot get a minute's sleep all night. Seven fellows die in our
ward. One of them sings hymns in a high cracked tenor before he
begins to gurgle. Another has crept out of his bed to the window.
He lies in front of it as though he wants to look out for the last
time.
* *
Our stretchers stand on the platform. We wait for the train. It
rains and the station has no roof. Our covers are thin. We have
waited already two hours.
The sergeant-major looks after us like a mother. Although I feel
pretty bad I do not let our scheme out of my mind. Occasionally I
let him see the packet and give him one cigar in advance. In
exchange the sergeant-major covers us over with a water-proof sheet.
"Albert, old man," I suddenly bethink myself, "our four poster and
the cat----"
"And the club chairs," he adds.
Yes, the club chairs with red plush. In the evening we used to sit
in them like lords, and intended later on to let them out by the
hour. One cigarette per hour. It might have turned into a regular
business, a real good living.
"And our bags of grub, too, Albert."
We grow melancholy. We might have made some use of the things. If
only the train left one day later Kat would be sure to find us and
bring us the stuff.
What damned hard luck! In our bellies there is gruel, mean hospital
stuff, and in our bags roast pork. But we are so weak that we cannot
work up any more excitement about it.
The stretchers are sopping wet by the time the train arrives in the
morning. The sergeant-major sees to it that we are put in the same
car. There is a crowd of red-cross nurses. Kropp is stowed in
below. I am lifted up and put into the bed above him.
"Good God!" I exclaim suddenly.
"What is it?" asks the sister.
I cast a glance at the bed. It is covered with clean snow-white
linen, that even has the marks of the iron still on it. And my shirt
has gone six weeks without being washed and is terribly muddy.
"Can't you get in by yourself?" asks the sister gently.
"Why yes," I say in a sweat, "but take off the bed cover first."
"What for?"
I feel like a pig. Must I get in there?--"It will get----" I
hesitate.
"A little bit dirty?" she suggests helpfully. "That doesn't matter,
we will wash it again afterwards."
"No, no, not that----" I say excitedly. I am not equal to such
overwhelming refinement.
"When you have been lying out there in the trenches, surely we can
wash a sheet," she goes on.
I look at her, she is young and crisp, spotless and neat, like
everything here; a man cannot realize that it isn't for officers
only, and feels himself strange and in some way even alarmed.
All the same, the woman is a tormentor, she is going to force me to
say it. "It is only----" I try again, surely she must know what I
mean.
"What is it then?"
"Because of the lice," I bawl out at last.
She laughs. "Well, they must have a good day for once, too."
Now I don't care any more. I scramble into bed and pull up the
covers.
A hand gropes over the bed-cover. The sergeant-major. He goes off
with the cigars.
An hour later we notice that we are moving.
At night I cannot sleep. Kropp is restless too. The train rides
easily over the rails. I cannot realize it all yet; a bed, a train,
home. "Albert!" I whisper.
"Yes----"
"Do you know where the latrine is?"
"Over to the right of the door, I think."
"I'm going to have a look." It is dark, I grope for the edge of the
bed and cautiously try to slide down. But my foot finds no support,
I begin to slip, the plaster leg is no help, and with a crash I lie
on the floor.
"Damn!" I say.
"Have you bumped yourself?" asks Kropp.
"You could hear that well enough for yourself," I growl, "my head----"
A door opens in the rear of the car. The sister comes with a light
and looks at me.
"He has fallen out of bed----"
She feels my pulse and smooths my forehead. "You haven't any fever,
though."
"No." I agree.
"Have you been dreaming then?" she asks.
"Perhaps----" I evade. The interrogation starts again. She looks at
me with her clear eyes, and the more wonderful and sweet she is the
less am I able to tell her what I want.
I am lifted up into bed again. That will be all right. As soon as
she goes I must try to climb down again. If she were an old woman,
it might be easier to say what a man wants, but she is so very young,
at the most twenty-five, it can't be done, I cannot possibly tell her.
Then Albert comes to my rescue, he is not bashful, it makes no
difference to him who is upset. He calls to the sister. She turns
round. "Sister, he wants----" but no more does Albert know how to
express it modestly and decently. Out there we say it in a single
word, but here, to such a lady---- All at once he remembers his
school days and finishes hastily: "He wants to leave the room,
sister."
"Ah!" says the sister, "but he shouldn't climb out of his bed with
his plaster bandage. What do you want then?" she says, turning to me.
I am in mortal terror at this new turn, for I haven't any idea what
the things are called professionally. She comes to my help.
"Little or big?"
This shocking business! I sweat like a pig and say shyly: "Well,
only quite a little one----"
At any rate, it produces the effect.
I get a bottle. After a few hours I am no longer the only one, and
by morning we are quite accustomed to it and ask for what we want
without any false modesty.
The train travels slowly. Sometimes it halts and the dead are
unloaded. It halts often.
Albert is feverish. I feel miserable and have a good deal of pain,
but the worst of it is that apparently there are still lice under the
plaster bandage. They itch terribly, and I cannot scratch myself.
We sleep through the days. The country glides quietly past the
window. The third night we reach Herbstal. I hear from the sister
that Albert is to be put off at the next station because of his
fever. "How far does the train go?" I ask.
"To Cologne."
"Albert," I say, "we stick together; you see."
On the sister's next round I hold my breath and press it up into my
head. My face swells and turns red. She stops. "Are you in pain?"
"Yes," I groan, "all of a sudden."
She gives me a thermometer and goes on. I would not have been under
Kat's tuition if I did not know what to do now. These army
thermometers are not made for old soldiers. All one has to do is to
drive the quicksilver up and then it stays there without falling
again.
I stick the thermometer under my arm at a slant, and flip it steadily
with my forefinger. Then I give it a shake. I send it up to 100.2°.
But that is not enough. A match held cautiously near to it brings it
up to 101.6°.
As the sister comes back, I blow myself out, breathe in short gasps,
goggle at her with vacant eyes, toss about restlessly, and mutter in
a whisper: "I can't bear it any longer----"
She notes me down on a slip of paper. I know perfectly well my
plaster bandage will not be re-opened if it can be avoided. Albert
and I are put off together.
* *
We are in the same room in a Catholic Hospital. That is a piece of
luck, the Catholic infirmaries are noted for their good treatment and
good food. The hospital has been filled up from our train, there are
a great many bad cases amongst them. We do not get examined to-day
because there are too few surgeons. The flat trolleys with the
rubber wheels pass continually along the corridor, and always with
someone stretched at full length upon them. A damnable position,
stretched out at full length like that;--the only time it is good is
when one is asleep.
The night is very disturbed. No one can sleep. Toward morning we
doze a little. I wake up just as it grows light. The door stands
open and I hear voices from the corridor. The others wake up too.
One fellow, who has been there a couple of days already explains it
to us: "Up here in the corridor every morning the sisters say
prayers. They call it Morning Devotion. And so that you can get
your share, they leave the door open."
No doubt it is well meant, but it gives us aches in our head and
bones.
"Such an absurdity!" I say, "just when a man dropped off to sleep."
"All the light cases are up here, that's why they do it here," he
replies.
Albert groans. I get furious and call out: "Be quiet out there!"
A minute later a sister appears. In her black and white dress she
looks like a beautiful tea-cosy. "Shut the door, will you, sister?"
says someone.
"We are saying prayers, that is why the door is open," she responds.
"But we want to go on sleeping----"
"Prayer is better than sleep," she stands there and smiles
innocently. "And it is seven o'clock already."
Albert groans again. "Shut the door," I snort.
She is quite disconcerted. Apparently she cannot understand. "But
we are saying prayers for you too."
"Shut the door, anyway."
She disappears leaving the door open. The intoning of the Litany
proceeds.
I feel savage, and say: "I'm going to count up to three. If it
doesn't stop before then I'll let something fly."
"Me, too," says another.
I count up to five. Then I take hold of a bottle, aim, and heave it
through the door into the corridor. It smashes into a thousand
pieces. The praying stops. A swarm of sisters appear and reproach
us in concert.
"Shut the door!" we yell.
They withdraw. The little one who came first is the last to go.
"Heathen," she chirps, but shuts the door all the same. We have won.
* *
At noon the hospital inspector arrives and abuses us. He threatens
us with clink and all the rest of it. But a hospital inspector is
just the same as a commissariat inspector, or any one else who wears
a long dagger and shoulder straps, but is really a clerk, and is
never considered even by a recruit as a real officer. So we let him
talk. What can they do to us, anyway----
"Who threw the bottle?" he asks.
Before I can think whether I should report myself, someone says: "I
did."
A man with a bristling beard sits up. Everyone is excited; why
should he report himself?
"You?"
"Yes. I was annoyed because we were waked up unnecessarily and lost
my senses so that I did not know what I was doing."
He talks like a book.
"What is your name?"
"Reinforcement-Reservist Josef Hamacher."
The inspector departs.
We are all curious. "But why did you say you did it? It wasn't you
at all!"
He grins. "That doesn't matter. I have a shooting licence."
Then, of course, we all understand. Whoever has a shooting licence
can do just whatever he pleases.
"Yes," he explains, "I got a crack in the head and they presented me
with a certificate to say that I was periodically not responsible for
my actions. Ever since then I've had a grand time. No one dares to
annoy me. And nobody does anything to me."
"I reported myself because the shot amused me. If they open the door
again to-morrow we will pitch another."
We are overjoyed. With Josef Hamacher in our midst we can now risk
anything.
Then come the soundless, flat trollies to take us away.
The bandages are stuck fast. We bellow like steers.
* *
There are eight men in our room. Peter, a curly black-haired fellow,
has the worst injury;--a severe lung wound. Franz Wächter, alongside
him, has a shot in the arm which didn't look too bad at first. But
the third night he calls out to us, telling us to ring, he thinks he
has a hæmorrhage.
I ring loudly. The night sister does not come. We have been making
rather heavy demands on her during the night, because we have all
been freshly bandaged, and so have a good deal of pain. One wants
his leg placed so, another so, a third wants water, a fourth wants
her to shake up his pillow;--in the end the buxom old body grumbled
bad temperedly and slammed the doors. Now no doubt she thinks it is
something of the same sort and so she is not coming.
We wait. Then Franz says: "Ring again."
I do so. Still she does not put in an appearance. In our wing there
is only one night sister, perhaps she has something to do in one of
the other rooms. "Franz, are you quite sure you are bleeding?" I
ask. "Otherwise we shall be getting cursed again."
"The bandage is wet. Can't anybody make a light?"
That cannot be done either. The switch is by the door and none of us
can stand up. I hold my thumb against the button of the bell till it
becomes numb. Perhaps the sister has fallen asleep. They certainly
have a great deal to do and are all overworked day after day. And
added to that is the everlasting praying.
"Should we smash a bottle?" asks Josef Hamacher of the shooting
licence.
"She wouldn't hear that any more than the bell."
At last the door opens. The old lady appears, mumbling. When she
perceives Franz's trouble she begins to bustle, and says: "Why did
not someone say I was wanted?"
"We did ring. And none of us here can walk."
He has been bleeding badly and she binds him up. In the morning we
look at his face, it has become sharp and yellow, whereas the evening
before he looked almost healthy. Now a sister comes oftener.
* *
Sometimes there are red-cross voluntary aid sisters. They are
pleasant, but often rather unskilled. They frequently give us pain
when re-making our beds, and then are so frightened that they hurt us
still more.
The nuns are more reliable. They know how they must take hold of us,
but we would be more pleased if they were somewhat more cheerful. A
few of them have real spirit, they are superb. There is no one who
would not do anything for Sister Libertine, this marvellous sister,
who spreads good cheer through the whole wing even when she can only
be seen in the distance. And there are others like her. We would go
through fire for her. A man cannot really complain, here he is
treated by the nuns exactly like a civilian. On the other hand, just
to think of a garrison hospital gives a man the creeps.
Franz Wachter does not regain his strength. One day he is taken away
and does not come back. Josef Hamacher knows all about it: "We
shan't see him again. They have put him in the dead room."
"What do you mean, Dead Room?" asks Kropp.
"Well, Dying Room----"
"What is that, then?"
"A little room at the corner of the building. Whoever is about to
kick the bucket is put in there. There are two beds in it. It is
generally called the Dying Room."
"But what do they do that for?"
"They don't have so much work to do afterwards. It is more
convenient, too, because it lies right beside the lift to the
mortuary. Perhaps also they do it for the sake of the others, so
that no one in the ward dies in sympathy. And they can look after
him better, too, if he is by himself."
"But what about him?"
Josef shrugs his shoulders. "Usually he doesn't take much notice any
more."
"Does everybody know about it then?"
"Anyone who has been here long enough knows, of course."
* *
In the afternoon Franz Wachter's bed has a fresh occupant. A couple
of days later they take the new man away, too. Josef makes a
significant gesture. We see many come and go.
Often relatives sit by the beds and weep or talk softly and
awkwardly. One old woman will not go away, but she cannot stay there
the whole night through. Another morning she comes very early, but
not early enough; for as she goes up to the bed, someone else is in
it already. She has to go to the mortuary. The apples that she has
brought with her she gives to us.
And then little Peter begins to get worse. His temperature chart
looks bad, and one day the flat trolley stands beside his bed.
"Where to?" he asks.
"To the bandaging ward."
He is lifted out. But the sister makes the mistake of removing his
tunic from the hook and putting it on the trolley too, so that she
should not have to make two journeys. Peter understands immediately
and tries to roll off the trolley. "I'm stopping here!"
They push him back. He cries out feebly with his shattered lung: "I
won't go to the Dying Room."
"But we are going to the bandaging ward."
"Then what do you want my tunic for?" He can speak no more. Hoarse,
agitated, he whispers: "Stopping here!"
They do not answer but wheel him out. At the door he tries to raise
himself up. His black curly head sways, his eyes are full of tears.
"I will come back again! I will come back again!" he cries.
The door shuts. We are all excited; but we say nothing. At last
Josef says: "Many a man has said that. Once a man is in there, he
never comes through."
* *
I am operated on and vomit for two days. My bones will not grow
together, so the surgeon's secretary says. Another fellow's have
grown crooked; his are broken again. It is disgusting.
Among our new arrivals there are two young soldiers with flat feet.
The chief surgeon discovers them on his rounds, and is overjoyed.
"We'll soon put that right," he tells them, "we will just do a small
operation, and then you will have perfectly sound feet. Enter them
down, sister."
As soon as he is gone, Josef, who knows everything, warns them:
"Don't you let him operate on you! That is a special scientific
stunt of the old boy's. He goes absolutely crazy whenever he can get
hold of anyone to do it on. He operates on you for flat feet, and
there's no mistake, you don't have them any more; you have club feet
instead, and have to walk all the rest of your life on sticks."
"What should a man do, then?" asks one of them.
"Say No. You are here to be cured of your wound, not your flat feet.
Did you have any trouble with them in the field? No, well, there you
are! At present you can still walk, but if once the old boy gets you
under the knife you'll be cripples. What he wants is little dogs to
experiment with, so the war is a glorious time for him, as it is for
all the surgeons. You take a look down below at the staff; there are
a dozen fellows hobbling around that he has operated on. A lot of
them have been here all the time since 'fourteen and 'fifteen. Not a
single one of them can walk better than he could before, almost all
of them worse, and most only with plaster legs. Every six months he
catches them again and breaks their bones afresh, and every time is
going to be the successful one. You take my word, he won't dare to
do it if you say No."
"Ach, man," says one of the two unfortunates, "better your feet than
your brain-box. There's no telling what you'll get if you go back
out there again? They can do with me just as they please, so long as
I get back home. Better to have a club foot than be dead."
The other, a young fellow like ourselves, won't have it done. One
morning the old man has the two hauled up and lectures and jaws at
them so long, that in the end they consent. What else could they
do?--They are mere privates, and he is a big bug. They are brought
back chloroformed and plastered.
* *
It is going badly with Albert. They have taken him and amputated his
leg. The whole leg has been taken off from the thigh. Now he hardly
speaks any more. Once he says he will shoot himself the first time
he can get hold of his revolver again.
A new convoy arrives. Our room gets two blind men. One of them is a
very youthful musician. The sisters never have a knife with them
when they feed him; he has already snatched one from a sister. But
in spite of this caution there is an incident. In the evening, while
he is being fed, the sister is called away, and leaves the plate with
the fork on his table. He gropes for the fork, seizes it and drives
it with all his force against his heart, then he snatches up a shoe
and strikes with it against the handle as hard as he can. We call
for help and three men are necessary to take the fork away from him.
The blunt prongs had already penetrated deep. He abuses us all night
so that no one can go to sleep. In the morning he has lock-jaw.
Again beds become empty. Day after day goes by with pain and fear,
groans and death-gurgles. Even the Death Room is no use any more, it
is too small; fellows die during the night in our room. They go even
faster than the sisters can cope with them.
But one day the door flies open, the flat trolley rolls in, and there
on the stretcher, pale, thin, upright and triumphant, with his shaggy
head of curls sits Peter. Sister Libertine with beaming looks pushes
him over to his former bed. He is back from the Dying Room. We have
long supposed him dead.
He looks round: "What do you say now?"
And even Josef has to admit that it is the first time he has ever
known of such a thing.
* *
Gradually a few of us venture to stand up. And I am given crutches
to hobble around on. But I do not make much use of them; I cannot
bear Albert's gaze as I move about the room. His eyes always follow
me with such a strange look. So I sometimes escape to the
corridor;--there I can move about more freely.
On the next floor below are the abdominal and spine cases, head
wounds and double amputations. On the right side of the wing are the
jaw wounds, gas cases, nose, ear, and neck wounds. On the left the
blind and the lung wounds, pelvis wounds, wounds in the joints,
wounds in the testicles, wounds in the intestines. Here a man
realizes for the first time in how many places a man can get hit.
Two fellows die of tetanus. Their skin turns pale, their limbs
stiffen, at last only their eyes live--stubbornly. Many of the
wounded have their shattered limbs hanging free in the air from a
gallows; underneath the wound a basin is placed into which the pus
drips. Every two or three hours the vessel is emptied. Other men
lie in stretching bandages with heavy weights hanging from the end of
the bed. I see intestine wounds that are constantly full of excreta.
The surgeon's clerk shows me X-ray photographs of completely smashed
hip-bones, knees, and shoulders.
A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still
human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one
hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in
Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in
Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done,
or thought, when such things are possible. It must all be lies and
of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent
this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in
their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.
I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but
despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss
of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in
silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one
another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons
and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of
my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world, see these
things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What
would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and
proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever
comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been
killing;--it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is
limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come
out of us?
* *
The oldest man in our room is Lewandowski. He is forty, and has
already lain ten months in the hospital with a severe abdominal
wound. Just in the last few weeks he has improved sufficiently to be
able to hobble about doubled up.
For some days past he has been in great excitement. His wife has
written to him from the little home in Poland where she lives,
telling him that she has saved up enough money to pay for the fare,
and is coming to see him.
She is already on the way and may arrive any day. Lewandowski has
lost his appetite, he even gives away red cabbage and sausage after
he has had a couple of mouthfuls. He goes round the room perpetually
with the letter. Everyone has already read it a dozen times, the
post-marks have been examined heaven knows how often, the address is
hardly legible any longer for spots of grease and thumb-marks, and in
the end what is sure to happen, happens: Lewandowski develops a
fever, and has to go back to bed.
He has not seen his wife for two years. In the meantime she has
given birth to a child, whom she is bringing with her. But something
else occupies Lewandowski's thoughts. He had hoped to get permission
to go out when his old woman came; for obviously seeing is all very
well, but when a man gets his wife again after such a long time, if
at all possible, a man wants something else besides.
Lewandowski has discussed it all with us at great length; in the army
there are no secrets about such things. And what's more, nobody
finds anything objectionable in it. Those of us who are already able
to go out have told him of a couple of very good spots in the town,
parks and squares, where he would not be disturbed; one of us even
knows of a little room.
But what is the use, there Lewandowski lies in bed with his troubles.
Life holds no more joy for him if he has to forego this affair. We
console him and promise to get over the difficulty somehow or other.
One afternoon his wife appears, a tousled little thing with anxious,
quick eyes like a bird, in a sort of black, crinkly mantilla with
ribbons; heaven knows where she inherited the thing.
She murmurs something softly and stands shyly in the doorway. It
terrifies her that there are six of us men present.
"Well, Marja," says Lewandowski, and gulps dangerously with his
Adam's apple, "you can come in all right, they won't hurt you."
She goes the round and proffers each of us her hand. Then she
produces the child, which in the interval has done something in its
napkin. From a large handbag embroidered with pearls she takes out a
clean one and makes the child fresh and presentable. This dispels
her first embarrassment, and the two begin to talk.
Lewandowski is very fidgety, every now and then he squints across at
us most unhappily with his round goggle eyes.
The time is favourable, the doctor's visit is over, at the most there
couldn't be more than one sister left in the ward. So one of us goes
out to prospect. He comes back and nods.
"Not a soul to be seen. Now's your chance, Johann, set to."
The two speak together in an undertone. The woman turns a little red
and looks embarrassed. We grin good-naturedly and make pooh-poohing
gestures, what does it matter! The devil take all the conventions,
they were made for other times; here lies the carpenter Johann
Lewandowski, a soldier shot to a cripple, and there is his wife; who
knows when he will see her again? He wants to have her, and he
should have her, good.
Two men stand at the door to forestall the sisters and keep them
occupied if they chance to come along. They agree to stand guard for
a quarter of an hour or thereabouts.
Lewandowski can only lie on his side, so one of us props a couple of
pillows against his back. Albert gets the child to hold, we all turn
round a bit, the black mantilla disappears under the bed-clothes, we
make a great clatter and play skat noisily.
All goes well. I hold a club solo with four jacks which nearly goes
the round. In the process we almost forget Lewandowski. After a
while the child begins to squall, although Albert, in desperation,
rocks it to and fro. Then there is a bit of creaking and rustling,
and as we look up casually we see that the child has the bottle in
its mouth, and is back again with its mother. The business is over.
We now feel ourselves like one big family, the woman is rather
quieter, and Lewandowski lies there sweating and beaming.
He unpacks the embroidered handbag, and a couple of good sausages
comes to light; Lewandowski takes up the knife with a flourish and
saws the meat into slices.
With a handsome gesture he waves toward us--and the little woman goes
from one to the other and smiles at us and hands round the sausage;
she now looks quite handsome. We call her Mother, she is pleased and
shakes up our pillows for us.
* *
After a few weeks I have to go each morning to the massage
department. There my leg is harnessed up and made to move. The arm
has healed long since.
New convoys arrive from the line. The bandages are no longer made of
cloth, but of white crêpe paper. Rag bandages have become scarce at
the front.
Albert's stump heals well. The wound is almost closed. In a few
weeks he should go off to an institute for artificial limbs. He
continues not to talk much, and is much more solemn than formerly.
He often breaks off in his speech and stares in front of him. If he
were not here with us he would have shot himself long ago. But now
he is over the worst of it, and he often looks on while we play skat.
I get convalescent leave.
My mother does not want to let me go away. She is so feeble. It is
all much worse than it was last time.
Then I am sent on from the base and return once more to the line.
Parting from my friend Albert Kropp was very hard. But a man gets
used to that sort of thing in the army.
CHAPTER XI
We count the weeks no more. It was winter when I came up, and when
the shells exploded the frozen clods of earth were just as dangerous
as the fragments. Now the trees are green again. Our life
alternates between billets and the front. We have almost grown
accustomed to it; war is a cause of death like cancer and
tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery. The deaths are merely
more frequent, more varied and terrible.
Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the
days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead.
Fields of craters within and without.
Everyone is so, not only ourselves here--the things that existed
before are no longer valid, and one practically knows them no more.
Distinctions, breeding, education are changed, are almost blotted out
and hardly recognizable any longer. Sometimes they give an advantage
for profiting by a situation;--but they also bring consequences along
with them, in that they arouse prejudices which have to be overcome.
It is as though formerly we were coins of different provinces; and
now we are melted down, and all bear the same stamp. To re-discover
the old distinctions, the metal itself must be tested. First we are
soldiers and afterwards, in a strange and shamefaced fashion,
individual men as well.
It is a great brotherhood, which to a condition of life arising out
of the midst of danger, out of the tension and forlornness of death,
adds something of the good-fellowship of the folk-song, of the
feeling of solidarity of convicts, and of the desperate loyalty to
one another of men condemned to death--seeking in a wholly unpathetic
way a fleeting enjoyment of the hours as they come. If one wants to
appraise it, it is at once heroic and banal--but who wants to do that?
It is this, for example, that makes Tjaden spoon down his ham-and-pea
soup in such tearing haste when an enemy attack is reported, simply
because he cannot be sure that in an hour's time he will still be
alive. We have discussed at length, whether it is right or not to do
so. Kat condemns it, because, he says, a man has to reckon with the
possibility of an abdominal wound, and that is more dangerous on a
full stomach than on an empty one.
Such things are real problems, they are serious matters to us, they
cannot be otherwise. Here, on the borders of death, life follows an
amazingly simple course, it is limited to what is most necessary, all
else lies buried in gloomy sleep;--in that lies our primitiveness and
our survival. Were we more subtly differentiated we must long since
have gone mad, have deserted, or have fallen. As in a polar
expedition, every expression of life must serve only the preservation
of existence, and is absolutely focussed on that. All else is
banished because it would consume energies unnecessarily. That is
the only way to save ourselves. In the quiet hours when the puzzling
reflection of former days, like a blurred mirror, projects beyond me
the figure of my present existence, I often sit over against myself,
as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active principle
that calls itself Life has adapted itself even to this form. All
other expressions lie in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual
watch against the menace of death;--it has transformed us into
unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct--it has
reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before
the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious
thought--it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we
escape the abyss of solitude--it has lent us the indifference of wild
creatures, so that in spite of all we perceive the positive in every
moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of
nothingness. Thus we live a closed, hard existence of the utmost
superficiality, and rarely does an incident strike out a spark. But
then unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up.
Those are the dangerous moments. They show us that the adjustment is
only artificial, that it is not simple rest, but sharpest struggle
for rest. In the outward form of our life we are hardly
distinguishable from Bushmen; but whereas the latter can be so
always, because they are so truly, and at best may develop further by
exertion of their spiritual forces, with us it is the reverse;--our
inner forces are not exerted toward regeneration, but toward
degeneration. The Bushmen are primitive and naturally so, but we are
primitive in an artificial sense, and by virtue of the utmost effort.
And at night, waking out of a dream, overwhelmed and bewitched by the
crowding faces, a man perceives with alarm how slight is the support,
how thin the boundary that divides him from the darkness. We are
little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of
dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go
out. Then the muffled roar of the battle becomes a ring that
encircles us, we creep in upon ourselves, and with big eyes stare
into the night. Our only comfort is the steady breathing of our
comrades asleep, and thus we wait for the morning.
* *
Every day and every hour every shell and every death cuts into this
thin support, and the years waste it rapidly. I see how it is
already gradually breaking down around me.
There is the mad story of Detering.
He was one of those who kept himself to himself. His misfortune was
that he saw a cherry tree in a garden. We were just coming back from
the front line, and at a turning of the road near our new billets,
marvellous in the morning twilight, stood this cherry tree before us.
It had no leaves, but was one white mass of blossom.
In the evening Detering was not to be seen. Then at last he came
back and had a couple of branches of cherry blossom in his hand. We
made fun of him, and asked whether he was going to a wedding. He
made no answer, but laid them on his bed. During the night I heard
him making a noise, he seemed to be packing. I sensed something
amiss and went over to him. He made out it was nothing, and I said
to him: "Don't do anything silly, Detering."
"Ach, why--it's merely that I can't sleep----"
"What did you pick the cherry branches for?"
"I might have been going to get some more cherry branches," he
replied, evasively--and after a while: "I have a big orchard with
cherry trees at home. When they are in blossom, from the hay loft
they look like one single sheet, so white. It is just the time."
"Perhaps you will get leave soon. You may even be sent back as a
farmer."
He nodded, but he was far away. When these peasants are excited they
have a curious expression, a mixture of cow and yearning god, half
stupid and half rapt. In order to turn him away from his thoughts I
asked him for a piece of bread. He gave it to me without a murmur.
That was suspicious, for he is usually tight-fisted. So I stayed
awake. Nothing happened; in the morning he was as usual.
Apparently he had noticed that I had been watching him;--but the
second morning after he was gone. I noticed it, but said nothing, in
order to give him time; he might perhaps get through. Various
fellows have already got into Holland.
But at roll call he was missed. A week after we heard that he had
been caught by the field gendarmes, those despicable military police.
He had headed toward Germany, that was hopeless, of course--and, of
course, he did everything else just as idiotically. Anyone might
have known that his flight was only home-sickness and a momentary
aberration. But what does a court martial hundreds of miles behind
the front-line know about it? We have heard nothing more of Detering.
* *
But sometimes it broke out in other ways, this danger, these pent-up
things, as from an overheated boiler. It will be enough to tell how
Berger met his end.
Our trenches have now for some time been shot to pieces, and we have
an elastic line, so that there is practically no longer any proper
trench warfare. When attack and counter-attack have waged backwards
and forwards there remains a broken line and a bitter struggle from
crater to crater. The front line has been penetrated, and everywhere
small groups have established themselves, the fight is carried on
from clusters of shell-holes.
We are in a crater, the English are coming down obliquely, they are
turning our flank and working in behind us. We are surrounded. It
is not easy to surrender, fog and smoke hang over us, no one would
recognize that we wanted to give ourselves up, and perhaps we don't
want to, a man doesn't even know himself at such moments. We hear
the explosions of the hand-grenades coming toward us. Our
machine-gun sweeps over the semicircle in front of us. The
cooling-water evaporates, we hastily pass round the case, every man
pisses in it, and thus we again have water, and are able to continue
firing. But behind us the attack crashes ever nearer.
A few minutes and we are lost.
Then, at closest range, a second machine-gun bursts out. It is set
up in a crater alongside us; Berger has fetched it, and now the
counter-attack comes over from behind; we are set free and make
contact with the rear.
Afterwards, as we lie in comparatively good cover, one of the
food-carriers reports that a couple of hundred yards distant there
lies a wounded messenger-dog.
"Where?" asks Berger.
The other describes the place to him. Berger goes off either to
fetch the beast in or to shoot it. Six months ago he would not have
cared, he would have been reasonable. We try to prevent him. Then,
as he goes off grimly, all we can say is: "You're mad," and let him
go. For these cases of front-line madness become dangerous if one is
not able to fling the man to the ground and hold him fast. And
Berger is six feet and the most powerful man in the company.
He is absolutely mad for he has to pass through the barrage; but this
lightning that lowers somewhere above us all has struck him and made
him demented. It affects others so that they begin to rave, to run
away--there was one man who even tried to dig himself into the ground
with hands, feet, and teeth.
It is true, such things are often simulated, but the pretence itself
is a symptom. Berger, who means to finish off the dog, is carried
off with a wound in the pelvis, and one of the fellows who carry him
gets a bullet in the cheek while doing it.
* *
Müller is dead. Someone shot him point blank with a Verey light in
the stomach. He lived for half an hour, quite conscious, and in
terrible pain.
Before he died he handed over his pocketbook to me, and bequeathed me
his boots--the same that he once inherited from Kemmerich. I wear
them, for they fit me quite well. After me Tjaden will get them, I
have promised them to him.
We have been able to bury Müller, but he is not likely to remain long
undisturbed. Our lines are falling back. There are too many fresh
English and American regiments over there. There's too much corned
beef and white wheaten bread. Too many new guns. Too many
aeroplanes.
But we are emaciated and starved. Our food is so bad and mixed up
with so much substitute stuff that it makes us ill. The factory
owners in Germany have grown wealthy;--dysentery dissolves our
bowels. The latrine poles are always densely crowded; the people at
home ought to be shown these grey, yellow, miserable, wasted faces
here, these bent figures from whose bodies the colic wrings out the
blood, and who with lips trembling and distorted with pain, grin at
one another and say: "It is not much sense pulling up one's trousers
again----"
Our artillery is fired out, it has too few shells and the barrels are
so worn that they shoot uncertainly, and scatter so widely as even to
fall on ourselves. We have too few horses. Our fresh troops are
anaemic boys in need of rest, who cannot carry a pack, but merely
know how to die. By thousands. They understand nothing about
warfare, they simply go on and let themselves be shot down. A single
flyer routed two companies of them for a joke, just as they came
fresh from the train--before they had ever heard of such a thing as
cover.
"Germany ought to be empty soon," says Kat.
We have given up hope that some day an end may come. We never think
so far. A man can stop a bullet and be killed; he can get wounded,
and then the hospital is his next stop. There, if they do not
amputate him, he sooner or later falls into the hands of one of those
staff surgeons who, with the War Service Cross in his button-hole,
says to him: "What, one leg a bit short? If you have any pluck you
don't need to run at the front. The man is A1. Dismiss!"
Kat tells a story that has travelled the whole length of the front
from the Vosges to Flanders;--of the staff surgeon who reads the
names on the list, and when a man comes before him, without looking
up, says: "A1. We need soldiers up there." A fellow with a wooden
leg comes up before him, the staff surgeon again says A1---- "And
then," Kat raises his voice, "the fellow says to him: 'I already have
a wooden leg, but when I go back again and they shoot off my head,
then I will get a wooden head made and become a staff surgeon." This
answer tickles us all immensely.
There may be good doctors, and there are, lots of them; all the same,
every soldier some time during his hundreds of inspections falls into
the clutches of one of these countless hero-grabbers who pride
themselves on changing as many C3's and B3's as possible into A1's.
There are many such stories, they are mostly far more bitter. All
the same, they have nothing to do with mutiny or lead-swinging. They
are merely honest and call a thing by its name; for there is a very
great deal of fraud, injustice, and baseness in the army.--Is it
nothing that regiment after regiment returns again and again to the
ever more hopeless struggle, that attack follows attack along the
weakening, retreating, crumbling line?
From a mockery the tanks have become a terrible weapon. Armoured
they come rolling on in long lines, and more than anything else
embody for us the horror of war.
We do not see the guns that bombard us; the attacking lines of the
enemy infantry are men like ourselves; but these tanks are machines,
their caterpillars run on as endless as the war, they are
annihilation, they roll without feeling into the craters, and climb
up again without stopping, a fleet of roaring, smoke-belching
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
years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin.
But perhaps all this that I think is mere melancholy and dismay,
which will fly away as the dust, when I stand once again beneath the
poplars and listen to the rustling of their leaves. It cannot be
that it has gone, the yearning that made our blood unquiet, the
unknown, the perplexing, the oncoming things, the thousand faces of
the future, the melodies from dreams and from books, the whispers and
divinations of women, it cannot be that this has vanished in
bombardment, in despair, in brothels.
Here the trees show gay and golden, the berries of the rowan stand
red among the leaves, country roads run white out to the sky line,
and the canteens hum like beehives with rumours of peace.
I stand up.
I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they bring me
nothing more, they can bring me nothing more. I am so alone, and so
without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that
has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes.
Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it
will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me.
He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the
whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single
sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.
He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping.
Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his
face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had
come.
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
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