All Quiet on the Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque

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      24

      he found another piss-a-bed and quar-tered him with tjaden, one in the bunk above the other. the next night they were changed over and the lower one put on top so that he could retaliate.

      with the thought of himmelstoss coming to the front, haie westhus smiles and rubs his hands together. he remembers our final day at the training camp.

      haie, kropp, tjaden, and myself had sworn to square accounts with himmelstoss. we knew which pub he visited every evening.

      returning to the barracks he had to go along a dark, uninhabited road.

      we waited for him behind a pile of stones.

      we leaped out with a bed-cover I had brought and threw it over his head from behind and pulled it round him so that he stood there unable to raise his arms.

      the matter ended with one of them sleeping on the floor, where he frequently caught cold.

      this accom-plished noth-ing. anyone who looked at their sallow skin could see that.

      it was our finest day in the army.

      alone?

      alone.

      haie was the first on him and delivered such a blow on the sack as would have felled an ox.

      haie let him get a gasp of air every so often.

      tjaden unbuttoned himmelstoss’s braces and pulled down his trousers. he then went to work on him with a small whip.

      we had to drag tjaden off of him to get our turn. finally haie stood him back up for one last remonstrance.

      himmelstoss yelled and made off on all fours, his striped postman’s backside gleaming in the moonlight.

      we disappeared at full speed.

      he never discovered whom he had to thank for the business.

      revenge is black-pudding.

      25

      himmelstoss started to yell, but haie had brought a cushion. he pressed it down on himmelstoss’s face while we worked on him.

      we have to go up on wiring fatigue. the motor lorries roll up after dark and we jammed in together, shoulder to shoulder, there is no room to sit. it is a warm evening and the twilight seems like a canopy under whose shelter we feel drawn together. mu ̈ller is in a good mood for once; he is wearing his new boots.

      even over the sound of the motor, kat and I hear the cackle of geese from a nearby farmyard.

      the lorries arrive at artillery gun- emplacements, and the roar of the guns makes our lorry stagger...

      ...we are now within the front’s embrace.

      as we leave the lorries, english batteries fire from beyond the right of our lines. our faces change imperceptibly. men who have been up as often as we have become thick-skinned, but the young recruits become agitated.

      ...now you’ll hear the burst.

      that was a twelve-inch. you can tell by the report...

      kat, I hear some aspirants for the frying pan.

      26

      the sentence has the sharpness of a bayo-net. we march up, moody or good-natured soldiers--we reach the zone where the front line begins and become on the instanthuman animals.

      to me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. to no man does the earth mean so much as 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.

      we press on to the pioneer dump. some of us load our shoulders with pointed and twisted iron stakes, others with rolls of wire.

      the burdens are awk-ward and heavy.

      the ground becomes more broken. from ahead comes warnings.

      ...I can feel it in my bones.

      mind,trenches...

      look out!deep shell holes on the left.

      there’ll be abombardment tonight...

      earth! -- Earth! -- earth!

      27

      it is pitch dark. an uncertain red glow spreads along the skyline from one end to the other.

      french rockets go up. they light up everything as bright as day with green, red and blue stars.

      at regular intervals we ram in the iron stakes, and others spool off the barbed wire. 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, but it has turned out too chilly. I wake up from a deep sleep with a start, and don’t know where I am. am I crying? am I a child?

      then I recognize the silhouette of katczinsky, the old veteran.

      ...mighty fine fireworks if they weren’t so dan-gerous.

      that gave you a fright. it was only a nose-cap. it landed in the bushes over there...

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      one lands behind us. some recruits СКАЧАТЬ