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.