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.