Free All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque Page B

and the 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 waken 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 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.

SIX

    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 resin, 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 waterproof 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 shimmering. 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 that they do not go back but are bringing up troops - troops, munitions, and guns.
    The English artillery has been strengthened, that we can detect at once. There are at least four more batteries of nine-inch guns 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 now 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