“All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque. Erich Maria Remarque

Page 11 of 13

Chapter 10

We found ourselves a warm place. Our team of eight must guard a village that had to be abandoned because the enemy was shelling it too heavily.

First of all, we were ordered to look after the food warehouse, from which not everything has been taken out yet. We must provide ourselves with food from available reserves. We're experts at this. We are Kat, Albert, Müller, Tjaden, Leer, Detering. Our entire squad gathered here. True, Haye is no longer alive. But we can still consider ourselves very lucky - in all other departments there were much more losses than ours.

For housing, we choose a concrete cellar with a staircase leading out. The entrance is also protected by a special concrete wall.

Then we develop a flurry of activity. We again had the opportunity to relax not only with our bodies, but also with our souls. But we don’t miss such cases, our situation is desperate, and we cannot indulge in sentimentality for a long time. You can indulge in despondency only as long as things are not completely bad." We have to look at things simply, we have no other way out. So simple that sometimes, when some thought wanders into my head for a minute, those pre-war times, I feel downright scared. But such thoughts don’t linger for long.

We must take our situation as calmly as possible. We take advantage of any opportunity for this. Therefore, next to the horrors of war, side by side with them, without any transition, in our lives there is the desire to fool around. And now we are working with zeal to create an idyll for ourselves - of course, an idyll in the sense of food and sleep.

First of all, we line the floor with mattresses that we brought from homes. A soldier’s butt sometimes also doesn’t mind being pampered on something soft. Only in the middle of the cellar is there free space. Then we get blankets and feather beds, incredibly soft, absolutely luxurious things. Fortunately, there is enough of all this in the village. Albert and I find a collapsible mahogany bed with a blue silk canopy and lace throws. We sweated seven times while we dragged her here, but we really can’t deny ourselves this, especially since in a few days she will probably be blown to pieces by shells.

Kat and I are going home for reconnaissance. Soon we manage to pick up a dozen eggs and two pounds of fairly fresh butter. We are standing in some living room, when suddenly a crash is heard and, breaking through the wall, an iron stove flies into the room, whistling past us and, at a distance of a meter, again goes into another wall. Two holes remain. The stove flew from the house opposite, which was hit by a shell.

“Lucky,” Kat grins, and we continue our search.

Suddenly we prick up our ears and take off running. Following this, we stop as if enchanted: two live piglets are frolicking in a small nook. We rub our eyes and carefully look there again. In fact, they are still there. We touch them with our hands. There is no doubt, these are really two young pigs.

This will be a delicious dish! About fifty steps from our dugout there is a small house in which the officers lived. In the kitchen we find a huge stove with two burners, frying pans, pots and cauldrons. There is everything here, including an impressive supply of finely chopped firewood stacked in the barn. Not a house, but a full cup.

In the morning we sent two of them into the field to look for potatoes, carrots and young peas. We live large, canned food from the warehouse does not suit us, we wanted something fresh. There are already two heads of cauliflower in the closet.

The piglets are slaughtered. Kat took over this matter. We want to bake potato pancakes for the roast. But we don't have potato graters. However, even here we soon find a way out of the situation: we take lids from tin cans, punch a lot of holes in them with a nail, and the graters are ready. Three of us put on thick gloves to avoid scratching our fingers, the other two peel the potatoes, and things get going.

Khat performs sacred acts over piglets, carrots, peas and cauliflower. He even made a white sauce for the cabbage. I bake potato pancakes, four at a time. After ten minutes, I got the hang of throwing pancakes that were fried on one side into the frying pan so that they turned over in the air and plopped back into place. The piglets are roasted whole. Everyone stands around them, like at an altar.

Meanwhile, guests came to us: two radio operators, whom we generously invite to dine with us. They are sitting in the living room, where there is a piano. One of them sat down next to him and played, the other sang “On the Weser”. He sings with feeling, but his pronunciation is clearly Saxon. Nevertheless, we listen to him movingly, standing at the stove on which all these delicious things are fried and baked.

After a while we notice that we are being fired upon, and in earnest. The tethered balloons detected smoke from our chimney, and the enemy opened fire on us. It's those nasty little things that dig a shallow hole and produce so many pieces that fly far and low. They are whistling around us, getting closer and closer, but we can’t really throw all the food here. Gradually these sneaks took aim. Several fragments fly through the upper frame of the window into the kitchen. We'll get through the roast quickly. But baking pancakes is becoming increasingly difficult. The explosions follow each other so quickly that the fragments increasingly splash against the wall and pour out through the window. Every time I hear the whistle of another toy, I squat down, holding a frying pan with pancakes in my hands, and press myself against the wall by the window. Then I immediately get up and continue baking.

The Saxon stopped playing - one of the fragments hit the piano. Little by little, we have managed our affairs and are organizing a retreat. After waiting for the next gap, two people take pots of vegetables and run like a bullet fifty meters to the dugout. We see them dive into it.

Another break. Everyone ducks down, and the second pair, each with a pot of first-class coffee in their hands, sets off at a trot and manages to take refuge in the dugout before the next break.

Then Kat and Kropp pick up a large pan of browned roast. This is the highlight of our program. The howl of a shell, a crouch - and now they are rushing, covering fifty meters of unprotected space.

I'm baking the last four pancakes; During this time I have to squat on the floor twice, but still now we have four more pancakes, and this is my favorite food.

Then I grab a plate with a tall stack of pancakes and stand, leaning against the door. A hiss, a crack, and I gallop away from my seat, clutching the dish to my chest with both hands. I'm almost there, when suddenly I hear a growing whistle. I rush like an antelope and go around the concrete wall like a whirlwind. The fragments drum on it; I slide down the stairs to the cellar; My elbows are broken, but I haven’t lost a single pancake or knocked over a dish.

At two o'clock we sit down for lunch. We eat until six. Until half past six we drink coffee, officer coffee from the food warehouse, and at the same time smoke officer cigars and cigarettes - all from the same warehouse. Exactly at seven we start dinner. At ten o'clock we throw the pig skeletons out the door. Then we move on to cognac and rum, again from the stock of the blessed warehouse, and again we smoke long, thick cigars with stickers on the belly. Tjaden claims that only one thing is missing - girls from the officer's brothel.

Late in the evening we hear meowing. A small gray kitten sits at the entrance. We lure him in and give him something to eat. This gives us our appetite again. When we go to bed, we still chew.

However, we have a hard time at night. We ate too much fat. Fresh suckling pig is very taxing on the stomach. The movement in the dugout never stops. Two or three people sit outside all the time with their pants down and curse everything in the world. I myself do ten passes. At about four o'clock in the morning we set a record: all eleven people, the guard team and the guests, sat around the dugout.

Burning houses blaze in the night like torches. The shells fly out of the darkness and crash into the ground with a roar. Columns of vehicles with ammunition rush along the road. One of the warehouse walls has been demolished. The drivers from the column crowd around the gap like a swarm of bees, and, despite the falling fragments, they take away the bread. We don't bother them. If we decided to stop them, they would beat us, that’s all. That's why we act differently. We explain that we are security, and since we know what is where, we bring canned food and exchange it for things that we lack. Why worry about them, because soon there will be nothing left here anyway! For ourselves, we bring chocolate from the warehouse and eat it whole bars. Kat says it's good to eat when your stomach doesn't give you rest to your legs.

Almost two weeks pass, during which all we do is eat, drink and laze around. Nobody bothers us. The village is slowly disappearing under the explosions of shells, and we live a happy life. As long as at least part of the warehouse is intact, we don’t need anything else, and we have only one desire - to stay here until the end of the war.

Tjaden has become so picky that he only smokes half of his cigars. He explains with importance that this has become a habit of his. Kat is also weird - when he wakes up in the morning, the first thing he does is shout:

Emil, bring caviar and coffee! In general, we are all terribly arrogant, one considers the other his orderly, addresses him as “you” and gives him instructions.

Kropp, my soles are itching, try to catch the louse.

With these words, Leer extends his leg to Albert, like a spoiled artist, and he drags him up the stairs by the leg.

At ease, Tjaden! By the way, remember: not “what,” but “I obey.” Well, one more time: “Tjaden!”

Tjaden bursts into abuse and again quotes the famous passage from Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen, which is always on his tongue.

Another week passes and we receive orders to return. Our happiness has come to an end. Two large trucks take us with them. Boards are piled on top of them. But Albert and I still manage to put our four-poster bed on top, with a blue silk bedspread, mattresses and lace throws. At the head of the bed we place a bag of selected products. From time to time we stroke hard smoked sausages, cans of liver and canned food, boxes of cigars fill our hearts with jubilation. Each of our team has such a bag with them.

In addition, Kropp and I saved two more red plush chairs. They stand in the bed, and we, lounging, sit on them, as if in a theater box. Like a tent, a silk blanket flutters and swells above us. Everyone has a cigar in their mouth. So we sit, looking at the area from above.

Between us stands the cage in which the parrot lived; we found her for the cat. We took the cat with us, she lies in a cage in front of her bowl and purrs.

Cars roll slowly down the road. We're eating. Behind us, where the now completely abandoned village remains, shells throw up fountains of earth.

In a few days we are moving out to take one place. Along the way we meet refugees - evicted residents of this village. They drag their belongings with them - in wheelbarrows, in baby carriages and simply on their backs. They walk with their heads down, grief, despair, persecution and resignation are written on their faces. Children cling to the hands of their mothers, sometimes an older girl leads the kids, and they stumble after her and keep turning back. Some carry some pathetic doll with them. Everyone is silent as they pass us.

For now we are moving in a marching column - after all, the French will not fire at a village from which their fellow countrymen have not yet left. But a few minutes later, a howl is heard in the air, the ground trembles, screams are heard, a shell hit the platoon at the rear of the column, and the fragments thoroughly battered it. We rush in all directions and fall on our faces, but at the same moment I notice that that feeling of tension, which always unconsciously dictated to me the only correct decision under fire, this time betrayed me; The thought flashes through my head like lightning: “You’re lost,” a disgusting, paralyzing fear stirs in me. Another moment - and I feel a sharp pain in my left leg, like the blow of a whip. I hear Albert scream; he is somewhere near me.

Get up, let's run, Albert! - I yell at him, because he and I are lying without shelter, in the open.

He barely gets off the ground and runs. I stay close to him. We need to jump over the hedge; she is taller than a human. Kropp clings to the branches, I catch his leg, he screams loudly, I push him, he flies over the fence. I jump, I fly after Kropp and fall into the water - there was a pond behind the fence.

Our faces are smeared with mud and mud, but we found good shelter. Therefore, we climb into the water up to our necks. Hearing the howl of a shell, we dive into it headlong.

After doing this ten times, I feel like I can't do it anymore. Albert also moans:

Let's get out of here, otherwise I'll fall and drown.

Where did you end up? - I ask.

It seems to be in the knee.

Can you run?

I guess I can.

Then let's run! We reach a roadside ditch and, bent down, rush along it. The fire is catching up with us. The road leads to the ammunition depot. If it takes off, not even a button will ever be found from us. So we change our plan and run into the field, at an angle to the road.

Albert starts to fall behind.

Run, I’ll catch up,” he says and falls to the ground.

I shake him and drag him by the hand:

Get up. Albert! If you lie down now, you won’t be able to run. Come on, I'll support you!

Finally we reach a small dugout. Kropp flops to the floor and I bandage him. The bullet entered just above the knee. Then I examine myself. There's blood on my pants, and there's blood on my hand too. Albert applies bandages from his bags to the entrance holes. He can no longer move his leg, and we both wonder how it was enough for us to drag ourselves here. This is all, of course, only out of fear - even if our feet were torn off, we would still run away from there. Even if they were on their stumps, they would have run away.

I can still crawl somehow and call a passing cart to pick us up. It is full of wounded. They are accompanied by an orderly, he pushes a syringe into our chest - this is an anti-tetanus shot.

In the field hospital we manage to get us put together. We are given thin broth, which we eat with contempt, albeit greedily - we have seen better times, but now we still want to eat.

So, right, let's go home, Albert? - I ask.

“Let’s hope,” he replies. - If only you knew what’s wrong with me.

The pain gets worse. Everything under the bandage is on fire. We drink water endlessly, mug after mug.

Where is my wound? Much above the knee? - asks Kropp.

“At least ten centimeters, Albert,” I answer.

In fact, there are probably three centimeters there.

That’s what I decided,” he says after a while, “if they take my leg away, I’ll call it a day.” I don’t want to hobble around the world on crutches.

So we lie alone with our thoughts and wait.

In the evening we are taken to the “cutting room”. I feel scared, and I quickly figure out what to do, because everyone knows that in field hospitals, doctors amputate arms and legs without hesitation. Now that the infirmaries are so crowded, it’s easier than painstakingly stitching a person back together from pieces. I'm reminded of Kemmerich. I will never allow myself to be chloroformed, even if I have to break someone's head.

So far everything is going well. The doctor is picking at the wound, so my vision gets dark.

There’s no point in pretending,” he scolds, continuing to chop me up.

The instruments sparkle in the bright light, like the teeth of a bloodthirsty beast. The pain is unbearable. Two orderlies hold my hands tightly: I manage to free one, and I’m about to hit the doctor on my glasses, but he notices this in time and jumps away.

Give this guy anesthesia! - he shouts furiously.

I immediately become calm.

Sorry, Mister Doctor, I will be quiet, but just don’t put me to sleep.

“That’s the same,” he creaks and takes up his instruments again.

He's a blond guy with duel scars and nasty gold glasses on his nose. He is at most thirty years old. I see that now he is deliberately torturing me - he is still rummaging in my wound, from time to time looking sideways at me from under his glasses. I grabbed the handrails - I’d rather die, but he wouldn’t hear a sound from me.

The doctor fishes out a fragment and shows it to me. Apparently, he is pleased with my behavior: he carefully puts a splint on me and says:

Tomorrow on the train and home! Then they put me in a plaster cast. Having seen Kropp in the ward, I tell him that the ambulance train will arrive, in all likelihood, tomorrow.

We need to talk to the paramedic so that we can be left together, Albert.

I manage to hand the paramedic two cigars with stickers from my supply and say a few words. He sniffs the cigars and asks:

What else do you have?

A good handful, I say. “And my friend,” I point to Kropp, “will have it too.” Tomorrow we will be happy to hand them over to you from the window of the ambulance train.

He, of course, immediately realizes what’s going on: after sniffing again, he says:

At night we cannot sleep for a minute. Seven people are dying in our ward. One of them sings chorales in a high, strangled tenor for an hour, then the singing turns into a death rattle. The other gets out of bed and manages to crawl to the windowsill. He lies under the window, as if about to look outside for the last time.

Our stretchers are at the station. We are waiting for the train. It's raining and the station has no roof. The blankets are thin. We've been waiting for two hours already.

The paramedic takes care of us like a caring mother. Although I feel very bad, I do not forget about our plan. As if by chance, I pull back the blanket so that the paramedic can see the packs of cigars, and give him one as a deposit. For this he covers us with a raincoat.

Eh, Albert, my friend,” I remember, “do you remember our four-poster bed and the cat?

And chairs,” he adds.

Yes, red plush chairs. In the evenings we sat on them like kings and were already planning to rent them out. One cigarette per hour. We would live without worries, and we would also have benefits.

Albert,” I remember, “and our bags of food...

We feel sad. All this would be very useful to us. If the train left a day later. Kat would surely have found us and brought us our share.

That's bad luck. In our stomachs we have a soup made of flour - meager hospital grub - and in our bags there are canned pork. But we are already so weak that we are not able to worry about this.

The train arrives only in the morning, and by this time water is squelching in the stretcher. The paramedic arranges us into one carriage. Sisters of mercy from the Red Cross are scurrying around everywhere. Kroppa is placed below. They lift me up, I am given a place above him.

Well, wait,” he suddenly bursts out from me.

What's the matter? - asks the sister.

I glance at the bed again. It is covered with snow-white linen sheets, incomprehensibly clean, they even show creases from the iron. And I haven’t changed my shirt for six weeks, it’s black with dirt.

Can't get in yourself? - the sister asks concerned.

“I’ll climb in,” I say, feeling that I’m sobbing, “just take off your underwear first.”

Why? I feel like I'm as dirty as a pig. Will they really put me here?

But I... - I don’t dare finish my thought.

Will you smear him a little? - she asks, trying to cheer me up. - It doesn’t matter, we’ll wash it later.

No, that’s not the point,” I say in excitement.

I am not at all ready for such a sudden return to the fold of civilization.

You were lying in the trenches, so why don’t we wash the sheets for you? - she continues.

I look at her; she is young and looks as fresh, crisp, cleanly washed and pleasant as everything around, it’s hard to believe that this is not only intended for officers, it makes you feel uneasy and even somehow scary.

And yet this woman is a real executioner: she forces me to speak.

I just thought... - I stop there: she must understand what I mean.

What else is this?

“Yes, I’m talking about lice,” I finally blurt out.

She laughs:

Someday they too need to live for their own pleasure.

Well, now I don't care. I climb onto the shelf and cover my head.

Someone's fingers are groping around the blanket. This is a paramedic. Having received the cigars, he leaves.

An hour later we notice that we are already on our way.

At night I wake up. Kropp is also tossing and turning. The train rolls quietly along the rails. All this is still somehow incomprehensible: bed, train, home. I whisper:

Albert!

Do you know where the restroom is?

I think it's behind that door on the right.

Now let's see.

It’s dark in the carriage, I feel for the edge of the shelf and am about to carefully slide down. But my leg can’t find a foothold, I start to slide off the shelf - I can’t rest on my wounded leg, and I fall to the floor with a crash.

Damn it! - I say.

Are you hurt? - asks Kropp.

But you haven’t heard, have you? - I snap. - I hit my head so hard that...

Here at the end of the carriage a door opens. My sister comes up with a lantern in her hands and sees me.

He fell off the shelf... She feels my pulse and touches my forehead.

But you don't have a temperature.

No, I agree.

Perhaps you were dreaming about something? - she asks.

Yes, probably,” I answer evasively.

And the questions begin again. She looks at me with her clear eyes, so pure and amazing - no, I just can’t tell her what I need.

They take me upstairs again. Wow, settled! After all, when she leaves, I will have to go downstairs again! If she were an old woman, I would probably tell her what was the matter, but she is so young, she can’t be more than twenty-five. There's nothing to be done, I can't tell her this.

Then Albert comes to my aid - he has nothing to be ashamed of, because this is not about him. He calls his sister to him:

Sister, he needs...

But Albert also doesn’t know how to express himself so that it sounds quite decent. At the front, in a conversation among ourselves, one word would be enough for us, but here, in the presence of such a lady... But then he suddenly remembers his school days and finishes smartly:

He should go out, sister.

“Oh, that’s it,” says the sister. - So for this he doesn’t need to get out of bed at all, especially since he’s in a cast. What exactly do you need? - she turns to me.

I am scared to death by this new turn of affairs, as I have not the slightest idea what terminology is adopted to refer to these things.

My sister comes to my aid:

Small or big?

What a shame! I feel like I’m all sweaty, and I say embarrassedly:

Only in small ways.

Well, things didn't end so badly after all.

They give me a duck. A few hours later, several more people follow my example, and by morning we are already accustomed and do not hesitate to ask for what we need.

The train is moving slowly. Sometimes he stops to unload the dead. He stops quite often.

Albert has a fever. I feel tolerable, my leg hurts, but what’s much worse is that there are obviously lice under the cast. My leg itches terribly, but I can’t scratch myself.

Our days pass in slumber. Outside the window the views silently float by. On the third night we arrive in Herbestal. I learn from my sister that Albert will be dropped off at the next stop because he has a fever.

Where will we stay? - I ask.

In Cologne.

Albert, we’ll stay together,” I say, “you’ll see.”

When the nurse makes her next round, I hold my breath and force the air inside. My face is filled with blood and turns purple. The sister stops:

Are you in pain?

Yes,” I say with a groan. - Somehow they suddenly started.

She gives me a thermometer and moves on. Now I know what to do, because it was not in vain that I studied with Kata. These soldier thermometers are not designed for highly experienced soldiers. As soon as you push the mercury up, it will get stuck in its narrow tube and will not come down again.

I put the thermometer under my arm diagonally, with the mercury pointing up, and click on it for a long time with my index finger. Then I shake it and turn it over. It turns out 37.9. But this is not enough. Carefully holding it over a burning match, I bring the temperature up to 38.7.

When my sister returns, I pout like a turkey, try to breathe sharply, look at her with drowsy eyes, toss and turn restlessly and say in a low voice:

Oh, I can’t stand it! She writes my last name on a piece of paper. I know for sure that my plaster cast will not be touched unless absolutely necessary.

I am taken off the train with Albert.

We are lying in the infirmary at a Catholic monastery, in the same ward. We are very lucky: Catholic hospitals are renowned for their good care and delicious food. The infirmary is completely filled with wounded from our train; many of them are in serious condition. Today we are not being examined yet because there are too few doctors here. Every now and then, low rubber carts are wheeled along the corridor, and every time someone lies on them, stretched out to their full height. It's a damn uncomfortable position - it's the only way to sleep well.

The night passes very restlessly. Nobody can sleep. In the morning we manage to doze off for a while. I wake up to the light. The door is open and voices are heard from the corridor. My roommates also wake up. One of them, who has been lying there for several days, explains to us what’s going on:

Up here the sisters say prayers every morning. They call it matins. In order not to deprive us of the pleasure of listening, they open the door to the room.

Of course, this is very thoughtful of them, but all our bones hurt and our heads are cracking.

What a disgrace! - I say. - I just managed to fall asleep.

There are people up here with minor injuries, so they decided that they could do this with us,” my neighbor answers.

Albert groans. I'm filled with anger and I scream:

Hey you there, shut up! A minute later, a sister appears in the room. In her black and white monastic habit, she resembles a pretty coffee pot doll.

“Close the door, sister,” someone says.

“The door is open because they are saying a prayer in the corridor,” she answers.

And we haven't gotten enough sleep yet.

It's better to pray than to sleep. - She stands and smiles an innocent smile. - Besides, it’s already seven o’clock.

Albert moaned again.

Close the door! - I bark.

The sister was taken aback; apparently, she couldn’t wrap her head around how someone could scream like that.

We are praying for you too.

Anyway, close the door! She disappears, leaving the door unlocked. Monotonous muttering is heard again in the corridor. This pisses me off and I say:

I count to three. If they don't stop by this time, I'll throw something at them.

“Me too,” says one of the wounded.

I count to five. Then I take an empty bottle, take aim and throw it through the door into the corridor. The bottle shatters into small fragments. The voices of those praying fall silent. A flock of sisters appears in the ward. They swear, but in very measured terms.

Close the door! - we shout.

They are removed. The little one who came to see us just now is the last to leave.

Atheists,” she babbles, but still closes the door.

We won.

At noon the head of the infirmary comes and gives us a beating. He threatens us with strength and even something worse. But all these military doctors, just like the quartermasters, are still nothing more than officials, even though they wear a long sword and epaulettes, and therefore even recruits do not take them seriously. Let him talk to himself. He won't do anything to us.

Who threw the bottle? - he asks.

I had not yet had time to figure out whether I should confess, when suddenly someone said:

I! A man with a thick, tangled beard sits up on one of the beds. Everyone is eager to find out why he named himself.

That's right. I became agitated because we had been woken up for no reason, and I lost control of myself, so much so that I no longer knew what I was doing. He speaks as if it were written.

What is your last name?

Joseph Hamacher, called up from reserve.

The inspector leaves.

We are all filled with curiosity.

Why did you say your last name? After all, it wasn’t you who did it!

He grins:

So what if it’s not me? I have "absolution of sins."

Now everyone understands what's going on here. Anyone who has "remission of sins" can do whatever he pleases.

So,” he says, “I was wounded in the head, and after that I was given a certificate stating that at times I am insane. Since then I don't care. I can't be annoyed. So they won't do anything to me. This guy from the first floor will be really angry. And I named myself because I liked the way they threw the bottle. If they open the door again tomorrow, we'll throw another one.

We rejoice noisily. As long as Joseph Hamacher is among us, we can do the most risky things.

Then silent strollers come for us.

The bandages have dried. We moo like bulls.

There are eight people in our room. The most serious wound is that of Peter, a dark-haired, curly-haired boy - he has a complex perforating wound in his lungs. His neighbor Franz Wächter has a shattered forearm, and at first it seems to us that his affairs are not so bad. But on the third night he calls out to us and asks us to call - it seems to him that blood has come through the bandages.

I press the button hard. The night nurse doesn't come. In the evening we made her run - we all got a bandage, and after that the wounds always hurt. One asked to put his leg this way, another - that way, the third was thirsty, the fourth needed to fluff his pillow - in the end the fat old woman began to grumble angrily, and slammed the door as she left. Now she probably thinks that everything is starting all over again, and that’s why she doesn’t want to go.

We are waiting. Franz then says:

Call again! I'm calling. The nurse still doesn't show up. At night, there is only one sister left in our entire wing; perhaps she has just been called to other wards.

Franz, are you sure you're bleeding? - I ask. - Otherwise they will scold us again.

The bandages are wet. Can someone please turn on the light?

But nothing works with the light either: the switch is by the door, but no one can get up. I press the call button until my finger goes numb. Perhaps my sister dozed off? After all, they have so much work, they already look so overtired during the day. Besides, they pray every now and then.

Should we throw the bottle? - asks Joseph Hamacher, a man to whom everything is permitted.

Since she doesn’t hear the bell, she certainly won’t hear this.

Finally the door opens. A sleepy old woman appears on the threshold. Seeing what happened to Franz, she begins to fuss and exclaims:

Why didn't anyone let anyone know about this?

We called. And none of us can walk.

He was bleeding heavily and is being bandaged again. In the morning we see his face: it has turned yellow and sharpened, but just yesterday evening he looked almost completely healthy. Now my sister began to visit us more often.

Sometimes sisters from the Red Cross look after us. They are kind, but sometimes they lack skill. When transferring us from the stretcher to the bed, they often hurt us, and then they get so scared that it makes us feel even worse.

We trust nuns more. They know how to deftly pick up a wounded person, but we wish they were a little more cheerful. However, some of them have a sense of humor, and these are really great guys. Which of us would not, for example, render any service to Sister Libertina? As soon as we see this amazing woman, even from afar, the mood in the entire outbuilding immediately rises. And there are many of them here. We are ready to go through fire and water for them. No, there is no need to complain - the nuns treat us just like civilians. And when you remember what is happening in the garrison hospitals, it just becomes scary.

Franz Wächter never recovered. One day they take it away and never bring it back. Joseph Hamacher explains:

Now we won't see him. They carried him to the death room.

What kind of dead thing is this? - asks Kropp.

Well, death row.

What is this?

This is a little room at the end of the wing. Those who were going to stretch their legs are placed there. There are two beds there. Everyone calls her dead.

But why do they do this?

And they have less fuss. Then it’s more convenient - the room is located right next to the elevator that takes you to the morgue. Or maybe this is being done so that no one dies in the wards, in front of others. And it’s easier to look after him when he’s lying alone.

What is it like for him himself?

Joseph shrugs:

So, whoever gets there usually doesn’t really understand what they’re doing to him.

So, does everyone here know this?

Those who have been here for a long time, of course, know.

After lunch, a new arrival is placed on Franz Wächter's bed. A few days later he too is taken away. Joseph makes an expressive gesture with his hand. He is not the last; many more come and go before our eyes.

Sometimes relatives sit by the beds; they cry or talk quietly, embarrassed. One old woman doesn’t want to leave, but she can’t stay here overnight. The next morning she comes very early, but she should have come even earlier - approaching the bed, she sees that the other one is already lying on it. She is invited to go to the morgue. She brought apples with her and now gives them to us.

Little Peter also feels worse. His temperature curve climbs alarmingly upward, and one fine day a low stroller stops at his bed.

Where? - he asks.

To the dressing room.

They lift him onto a wheelchair. But the sister makes a mistake: she takes his soldier’s jacket off the hook and puts it next to him so as not to go back for it again. Peter immediately realizes what’s going on and tries to roll out of the stroller:

I'm staying here! They don't let him get up. He shouts softly with his perforated lungs:

I don’t want to go to the dead!

Yes, we are taking you to the dressing room.

What do you need my jacket for then? He is no longer able to speak. He whispers in a hoarse, excited whisper:

Leave me here! They don’t answer and take him out of the room. At the door he tries to get up. His black curly head is shaking, his eyes are full of tears.

I'll be back! I'll be back! - he shouts.

The door closes. We are all excited, but we are silent. Finally Joseph says:

We are not the first to hear this. But whoever gets there will never survive.

I have surgery and after that I vomit for two days. My doctor's clerk says that my bones don't want to heal. In one of our departments, they grew together incorrectly, and they broke them again for him. This is also a small pleasure. Among the new arrivals are two young soldiers suffering from flat feet. During their rounds, they catch the eye of the chief doctor, who happily stops near their beds.

We will save you from this,” he says. - A small operation and you will have healthy legs. Sister, write them down.

As he leaves, the all-knowing Joseph warns newcomers:

Look, don't agree to the operation! This, you see, our old man has such a thing for science. He even dreams about how to get someone for this job. He will perform an operation on you, and after this your foot will indeed no longer be flat; but it will be crooked, and you will hobble around with a stick until the end of your days.

What should we do now? - asks one of them.

Don't give consent! You were sent here to treat wounds, not to cure flat feet! What kind of legs did you have at the front? Ah, that's it! Now you can still walk, but if you go under the knife of an old man, you will become crippled. He needs guinea pigs, so for him war is the most wonderful time, as for all doctors. Take a look at the lower department - there are a good dozen people crawling around there whom he operated on. Some have been sitting here for years, from the fifteenth and even the fourteenth year. None of them began to walk better than before; on the contrary, almost all of them walked worse; most of them had legs in plaster. Every six months he drags them back onto the table and breaks their bones in a new way, and each time he tells them that success is now assured. Think carefully, he has no right to do this without your consent.

“Eh, buddy,” says one of them tiredly, “legs are better than heads.” Can you tell me in advance which place you will get when they send you there again? Let them do whatever they want to me, as long as I get home. It's better to hobble and stay alive.

His friend, a young guy our age, does not give consent. The next morning the old man orders them to be brought down; there he begins to persuade them and shouts at them, so that in the end they finally agree. What can they do? After all, they are just a gray beast, and he is a big shot. They are brought into the ward under chloroform and in plaster.

Albert is doing poorly. He is carried to the operating room for amputation. The entire leg is taken away, all the way to the top. Now he has almost completely stopped talking. One day he says that he is going to shoot himself, that he will do it as soon as he gets his hands on his revolver.

A new train with wounded arrives. Two blind people are admitted to our ward. One of them is still a very young musician. When serving him dinner, the sisters always hide their knives from him; he had already snatched the knife out of the hands of one of them. Despite these precautions, trouble befell him.

In the evening, at dinner, his sister, who is serving him, is called out of the room for a minute, and she places a plate and fork on his table. He grops for a fork, takes it in his hand and plunges it into his heart with a flourish, then grabs his shoe and hits the handle with all his might. We are calling for help, but we can’t handle him alone; we need three people to take the fork away from him. The blunt teeth managed to penetrate quite deeply. He scolds us all night, so no one can sleep. In the morning he begins to have a fit of hysteria.

Our beds are freeing up. Days go by days, and each of them is pain and fear, groans and wheezing. “The dead” are no longer needed, there are too few of them - at night people die in the wards, including ours. Death overtakes the wise foresight of our sisters.

But then one fine day the door swings open, a carriage appears on the threshold, and on it - pale, thin - sits Peter, victoriously raising his black curly head. Sister Libertina, with a beaming face, rolls him to his old bed. He returned from the "dead room". And we have long believed that he died.

He looks in all directions:

Well, what do you say to that?

And even Joseph Hamacher is forced to admit that he has never seen anything like this before.

After a while, some of us get permission to get out of bed. They also give me crutches, and little by little I begin to hobble. However, I rarely use them, I can’t stand the look Albert stares at me as I walk across the ward. He always looks at me with such strange eyes. Therefore, from time to time I escape into the corridor - there I feel freer.

On the floor below there are those wounded in the stomach, spine, head and with amputation of both arms or legs. In the right wing are people with crushed jaws, poisoned by gas, wounded in the nose, ears and throat. The left wing is given to the blind and wounded to the lungs, pelvis, joints, kidneys, scrotum, and stomach. Only here you can clearly see how vulnerable the human body is.

Two of the wounded die from tetanus. Their skin turns gray, their body becomes numb, and in the end life glimmers - for a very long time - in only their eyes. Some have a broken arm or leg tied with a cord and hanging in the air, as if suspended from a gallows. Others have guy wires attached to the headboard with heavy weights at the end that hold the healing arm or leg in a tense position. I see people with their intestines torn open and feces constantly accumulating in them. The clerk shows me x-rays of hip, knee and shoulder joints, crushed into small fragments.

It seems incomprehensible that human faces, still living ordinary, everyday lives, are attached to these tattered bodies. But this is only one infirmary, only one department! There are hundreds of thousands of them in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How meaningless is everything that is written, done and thought about by people, if such things are possible in the world! To what extent is our thousand-year-old civilization deceitful and worthless if it could not even prevent these flows of blood, if it allowed hundreds of thousands of such dungeons to exist in the world. Only in the infirmary do you see with your own eyes what war is.

I am young - I am twenty years old, but all I have seen in life is despair, death, fear and the interweaving of the most absurd thoughtless vegetation with immeasurable torment. I see that someone is setting one nation against another and people are killing each other, in a mad blindness submitting to someone else’s will, not knowing what they are doing, not knowing their guilt. I see that the best minds of mankind are inventing weapons to prolong this nightmare, and finding words to justify it even more subtly. And together with me, all people of my age see this, here and here, all over the world, our entire generation is experiencing this. What will our fathers say if we ever rise from our graves and stand before them and demand an account? What can they expect from us if we live to see the day when there is no war? For many years we were engaged in killing. This was our calling, the first calling in our lives. All we know about life is death. What will happen next? And what will become of us?

The oldest in our ward is Levandovsky. He is forty years old; he has a serious wound in the stomach and has been in the hospital for ten months. Only in recent weeks has he recovered enough to stand up and, arching his lower back, hobble a few steps.

He has been very agitated for several days now. A letter came from his wife from a provincial Polish town, in which she writes that she has saved money for the trip and can now visit him.

She has already left and should arrive here any day now. Lewandowski has lost his appetite, he even gives sausages and cabbage to his comrades, barely touching his portion. All he knows is that he is walking around the ward with a letter; each of us has read it ten times already, the stamps on the envelope have been checked an infinite number of times, it is all stained with grease and is so covered that the letters are almost invisible, and finally what should have been expected happens - Lewandowski’s temperature rises and he I have to go to bed again.

He hasn't seen his wife for two years. During this time she gave birth to his child; she will bring it with her. But Lewandowski’s thoughts are not occupied with this at all. He hoped that by the time his old woman arrived he would be allowed to go out into the city - after all, it is clear to everyone that it is, of course, pleasant to look at his wife, but if a person has been separated from her for so long, he wants to satisfy, if possible, some other desires.

Lewandowski discussed this issue with each of us for a long time - after all, the soldiers have no secrets on this matter. Those of us who are already being released into the city named him several excellent corners in gardens and parks, where no one would bother him, and one even had a small room in mind.

But what's the point of all this? Lewandowski lies in bed, besieged by worries. Life is not pleasant to him now, he is so tormented by the thought that he will have to miss this opportunity. We console him and promise that we will try to pull this off somehow.

The next day his wife appears, a small, dry woman with timid, fast-moving bird eyes, wearing a black mantilla with ruffles and ribbons. God knows where she dug this one up; she must have inherited it.

The woman mutters something quietly and timidly stops in the doorway. She was afraid that there were six of us here.

Well, Marya,” says Levandovsky, moving his Adam’s apple with a distressed look, “come in, don’t be afraid, they won’t do anything to you.”

Levandovskaya goes around the beds and shakes hands with each of us, then shows the baby, who in the meantime has managed to soil his diapers. She brought with her a large beaded bag; Taking out a clean piece of flannel, she quickly swaddles the baby. This helps her overcome her initial embarrassment and she begins to talk to her husband.

He is nervous, every now and then glancing at us with his round, bulging eyes, and he looks most unhappy.

The time is right now - the doctor has already made his rounds; in the worst case, a nurse could look into the room. Therefore, one of us goes out into the corridor to find out the situation. Soon he returns and makes a sign:

There is nothing at all. Go ahead, Johann! Tell her what's wrong and take action.

They are talking to each other about something in Polish. Our guest looks at us embarrassedly, she blushed a little. We grin good-naturedly and energetically wave it off, “Well, what’s wrong with this!” Damn all prejudices! They are good for other times. Here lies the carpenter Johann Lewandowski, a soldier crippled in the war, and here is his wife. Who knows, when he meets her again, he wants to possess her, let his wish come true, and be done with it!

In case any sister does appear in the corridor, we post two people at the door to intercept her and engage her in conversation. They promise to keep watch for a quarter of an hour.

Lewandowski can only lie on his side. So one of us places a few more pillows behind his back. The baby is handed to Albert, then we turn away for a moment, the black mantilla disappears under the blanket, and we cut ourselves into a stingray with loud knocks and jokes.

Everything is going well. I only collected some crosses, and even then it was a trifle, but by some miracle I managed to get out. Because of this, we almost completely forgot about Lewandowski. After a while, the baby begins to cry, although Albert rocks him in his arms with all his might. Then a quiet rustling and rustling is heard, and when we casually raise our heads, we see that the child is already sucking his horn on his mother’s lap. It's done.

Now we feel like one big family; Levandovsky's wife became completely cheerful, and Levandovsky himself, sweating and happy, lies in his bed and is completely beaming.

He unpacks the embroidered bag. It contains some excellent sausages. Lewandowski takes a knife - solemnly, as if it were a bouquet of flowers, and cuts them into pieces. He gestures broadly at us, and a small, dry woman comes up to each of us, smiles and divides the sausage between us. Now she seems downright pretty. We call her mom, and she is happy about it and fluffs our pillows.

After a few weeks, I start going to physical therapy exercises every day. They strap my foot to the pedal and give it a warm-up. The hand has long since healed.

New trains of wounded are arriving from the front. The bandages are now not made of gauze, but of white corrugated paper - the dressing material at the front has become tight.

Albert's stump is healing well. The wound is almost closed. In a few weeks he will be discharged for prosthetics. He still doesn't talk much and is much more serious than before. Often he falls silent mid-sentence and looks at one point. If it weren't for us, he would have committed suicide long ago. But now the most difficult time is behind him. Sometimes he even watches us play scat.

After discharge I am given leave.

My mother doesn't want to leave me. She's so weak. It's even harder for me than last time.

Then a call comes from the regiment, and I go to the front again.

It's hard for me to say goodbye to my friend Albert Kropp. But such is the lot of a soldier - over time he gets used to this too.

Erich Maria Remarque

No change on the Western Front. Return

No change on the Western Front

This book is neither an accusation nor a confession. This is only an attempt to talk about the generation that was destroyed by the war, about those who became its victims, even if they escaped from the shells.

We are standing nine kilometers from the front line. Yesterday we were replaced; Now our stomachs are full of beans and meat, and we all walk around full and satisfied. Even for dinner, everyone got a full pot; On top of that, we get a double portion of bread and sausage - in a word, we live well. This hasn’t happened to us for a long time: our kitchen god with his crimson, like a tomato, bald head himself offers us more food; he waves the ladle, inviting passers-by, and pours out hefty portions to them. He still won’t empty his “squeaker,” and this drives him into despair. Tjaden and Müller obtained several basins from somewhere and filled them to the brim - in reserve. Tjaden did it out of gluttony, Müller out of caution. Where everything that Tjaden eats goes is a mystery to all of us. He still remains as skinny as a herring.

But the most important thing is that the smoke was also given out in double portions. Each person had ten cigars, twenty cigarettes and two bars of chewing tobacco. Overall, pretty decent. I exchanged Katchinsky’s cigarettes for my tobacco, so now I have forty in total. You can last one day.

But, strictly speaking, we are not entitled to all this at all. The management is not capable of such generosity. We were just lucky.

Two weeks ago we were sent to the front line to relieve another unit. It was quite calm in our area, so by the day of our return the captain received allowances according to the usual distribution and ordered to cook for a company of one hundred and fifty people. But just on the last day the British suddenly brought up their heavy “meat grinders”, very unpleasant things, and beat them on our trenches for so long that we suffered heavy losses, and only eighty people returned from the front line.

We arrived at the rear at night and immediately stretched out on our bunks to first get a good night's sleep; Katchinsky is right: the war would not be so bad if only one could sleep more. You never get much sleep on the front line, and two weeks drag on for a long time.

When the first of us began to crawl out of the barracks, it was already midday. Half an hour later, we grabbed our pots and gathered at the “squeaker” dear to our hearts, which smelled of something rich and tasty. Of course, the first in line were those who always had the biggest appetite: short Albert Kropp, the brightest head in our company and, probably for this reason, only recently promoted to corporal; Muller the Fifth, who still carries textbooks with him and dreams of passing preferential exams: under hurricane fire, he crams the laws of physics; Leer, who wears a thick beard and has a weakness for girls from brothels for officers: he swears that there is an order in the army obliging these girls to wear silk underwear, and to take a bath before receiving visitors with the rank of captain and above; the fourth is me, Paul Bäumer. All four were nineteen years old, all four went to the front from the same class.

Immediately behind us are our friends: Tjaden, a mechanic, a frail young man of the same age as us, the most gluttonous soldier in the company - he sits down for food thin and slender, and after eating, he stands up pot-bellied, like a sucked bug; Haye Westhus, also our age, a peat worker who can freely take a loaf of bread in his hand and ask: “Well, guess what’s in my fist?”; Detering, a peasant who thinks only about his farm and his wife; and, finally, Stanislav Katchinsky, the soul of our squad, a man with character, smart and cunning - he is forty years old, he has a sallow face, blue eyes, sloping shoulders and an extraordinary sense of smell about when the shelling will begin, where you can get food and how It's best to hide from your superiors.

Our section headed the line that formed near the kitchen. We began to get impatient as the unsuspecting cook was still waiting for something.

Finally Katchinsky shouted to him:

- Well, open up your glutton, Heinrich! And so you can see that the beans are cooked!

The cook shook his head sleepily:

- Let everyone gather first.

Tjaden grinned:

- And we are all here!

The cook still didn't notice anything:

- Keep your pocket wider! Where are the others?

- They are not on your payroll today! Some are in the infirmary, and some are in the ground!

Upon learning of what had happened, the kitchen god was struck down. He was even shaken:

- And I cooked for a hundred and fifty people!

Kropp poked him in the side with his fist.

“That means we’ll eat our fill at least once.” Come on, start the distribution!

At that moment, a sudden thought struck Tjaden. His face, sharp as a mouse, lit up, his eyes squinted slyly, his cheekbones began to play, and he came closer:

- Heinrich, my friend, so you got bread for a hundred and fifty people?

The dumbfounded cook nodded absently.

Tjaden grabbed him by the chest:

- And sausage too?

The cook nodded again with his head as purple as a tomato. Tjaden's jaw dropped:

- And tobacco?

- Well, yes, that's it.

Tjaden turned to us, his face beaming:

- Damn it, that's lucky! After all, now everything will go to us! It will be - just wait! – that’s right, exactly two servings per nose!

But then the Tomato came to life again and said:

- It won’t work that way.

Now we, too, shook off our sleep and squeezed closer.

- Hey, carrot, why won’t it work? – asked Katchinsky.

- Yes, because eighty is not one hundred and fifty!

“But we’ll show you how to do it,” Muller grumbled.

“You’ll get the soup, so be it, but I’ll give you bread and sausage only for eighty,” Tomato continued to persist.

Katchinsky lost his temper:

“I wish I could send you to the front line just once!” You received food not for eighty people, but for the second company, that’s it. And you will give them away! The second company is us.

We took Pomodoro into circulation. Everyone disliked him: more than once, through his fault, lunch or dinner ended up in our trenches cold, very late, since even with the most insignificant fire he did not dare to move closer with his cauldron and our food bearers had to crawl much further than their brothers from other mouths. Here is Bulke from the first company, he was much better. Although he was as fat as a hamster, if necessary, he dragged his kitchen almost to the very front.

We were in a very belligerent mood, and, probably, things would have come to a fight if the company commander had not appeared at the scene. Having learned what we were arguing about, he only said:

- Yes, yesterday we had big losses...

Then he looked into the cauldron:

– And the beans seem to be quite good.

The tomato nodded:

- With lard and beef.

The lieutenant looked at us. He understood what we were thinking. In general, he understood a lot - after all, he himself came from our midst: he came to the company as a non-commissioned officer. He lifted the lid of the cauldron again and sniffed. As he left, he said:

- Bring me a plate too. And distribute portions for everyone. Why should good things disappear?

Tomato's face took on a stupid expression. Tjaden danced around him:

- It’s okay, this won’t hurt you! He imagines that he is in charge of the entire quartermaster service. Now get started, old rat, and make sure you don’t miscalculate!..

- Get lost, hanged man! - Tomato hissed. He was ready to burst with anger; everything that happened could not fit into his head, he did not understand what was going on in this world. And as if wanting to show that now everything was the same to him, he himself distributed another half a pound of artificial honey to his brother.

Today turned out to be a good day indeed. Even the mail arrived; almost everyone received several letters and newspapers. Now we slowly wander to the meadow behind the barracks. Kropp carries a round margarine barrel lid under his arm.

On the right edge of the meadow there is a large soldiers' latrine - a well-built structure under a roof. However, it is of interest only to recruits who have not yet learned to benefit from everything. We are looking for something better for ourselves. The fact is that here and there in the meadow there are single cabins intended for the same purpose. These are rectangular boxes, neat, made entirely of boards, closed on all sides, with a magnificent, very comfortable seat. They have handles on the sides so the booths can be moved.

We move three booths together, put them in a circle and leisurely take our seats. We won't get up from our seats until two hours later.

I still remember how embarrassed we were at first, when we lived in the barracks as recruits and for the first time we had to use a common restroom. There are no doors, twenty people sit in a row, like on a tram. You can take one look at them - after all, a soldier must always be under surveillance.

Rated the book

Today we would wander around our native places like visiting tourists. A curse hangs over us - the cult of facts. We distinguish between things like traders and understand necessity like butchers. We stopped being careless, we became terribly indifferent. Let us assume that we remain alive; but will we live?
We are helpless, like abandoned children, and experienced, like old people, we have become callous, and pitiful, and superficial - it seems to me that we will never be reborn.

I think that this quote can say everything that I experienced... All the misfortune of the lost generation of the war. And it doesn’t matter what kind of war it is, the important thing is that after it you lose yourself in the world.
A very powerful piece. This is the first time I've read about a war that is told from the perspective of a German soldier. A soldier who was yesterday's schoolboy, who loved books and life. Who was not broken by difficulties - he did not become a coward and a traitor, he fought honestly, difficulties did not break him, he just got lost in this war.. One of his friends said correctly - let the generals go one on one, and from the outcome of this fight they would determine would be the winner.
How many destinies... How many people. How scary it is.

We see people who are still alive, although they have no head; we see soldiers running although both their feet have been cut off; they hobble on their stumps with splinters of bone protruding to the nearest crater; one corporal crawls two kilometers on his hands, dragging his broken legs behind him; another goes to the dressing station, pressing the spreading intestines to his stomach with his hands; we see people without lips, without a lower jaw, without a face; we pick up a soldier who, for two hours, pressed his teeth against an artery in his arm so as not to bleed; The sun rises, night comes, shells whistle, life is over.

How attached I became to Remarque’s heroes! How they did not lose heart during the war, maintained a sense of humor, fought hunger and supported each other. How they wanted to live.. Yesterday’s boys who had to grow up so quickly. Who had to see death, who had to kill. Of course, it is difficult for them to adapt to the other life from which they came straight into war.
And how Remarque vividly describes this through the mouth of the main character. And you begin to understand that for some people human life is worth nothing... But Paul, sitting in a trench with a killed French soldier, thought about all this. I thought that they were defending their fatherland, but the French were also defending their fatherland. Someone is waiting for everyone. They have a place to return to. But will they be able to live later?
The war constantly echoes in the souls of those who went through it. No matter what kind of war it is, it always cripples destinies. And those who survived - the winners and the vanquished - suffer, and the relatives and friends of those who did not return from the war suffer. And for a long time they dream, shuddering at every rustle.
This is a very difficult piece. And we should collect all these books about wars in different times, in different countries and give them to read to all those who unleash this bloodshed. Is something trembling in your chest? Will your heart hurt?
Don't know..

Rated the book

We are no longer young people. We are no longer going to take life by battle. We are fugitives. We are running from ourselves. From your life. We were eighteen years old, and we were just beginning to love the world and life; we had to shoot at them. The first shell that exploded hit our heart. We are cut off from rational activity, from human aspirations, from progress. We don't believe in them anymore. We believe in war.

I usually give a book a perfect rating if it's a compelling read or simply blows my mind. Neither of these happened here. The novel was read normally, nothing more, everything was calm and without any special emotions, I didn’t learn anything new. But when the last pages passed, I felt somehow strange. And after that the hand was no longer raised to give a four. Because damn, this is an insanely powerful book.

First World War. These guys were students just yesterday. They found themselves thrown out of life straight into the trenches. Yesterday's boys, who turned into old men under machine-gun fire, left the care of their parents, but did not have time to fall in love, did not have time to choose a path in life. Young Paul loses his friends one by one, death becomes part of everyday life, but is it so scary? Much more terrible is the question of what to do when peace comes (if it comes!). Will any of them be able to live on? Or is it better that it all ends here on the battlefield?

The best books about war are those written in this language. Dry, ordinary. The hero-storyteller is not trying to squeeze a tear out of you, scare you, or make you feel sorry for him. He simply talks about his life. And it is behind this calm story that the true horror of war is shown, when things terrible in their cruelty turn into an ordinary weekday.

But what distinguishes this novel from other similar works is not the actual description of military operations and inevitable tragedies, but the frightening psychological atmosphere. The young soldiers are still alive, but at heart they are actually dead. Yesterday’s children, they don’t understand what to do with life, if, of course, they stay alive, they don’t understand why they are fighting. They defend their fatherland, but their French enemies also defend theirs. Who needs this war? What's the point?
But the main question is: do these guys have a future? Alas, there is no future, and the past has dissolved, sunk into oblivion and seems so funny, unreal and alien...

Shells, clouds of gases and tank divisions - injury, suffocation, death.
Dysentery, flu, typhus - pain, fever, death.
Trenches, infirmary, mass grave - there are no other possibilities.

A very, very powerful thing. And when you read, you don’t feel anything like that, the whole enormity of this small book grows gradually behind the pages, but to such an extent that in the end it looms menacingly over your consciousness.

Rated the book

I really respect books about war and, despite all their severity, I definitely read one or two a year. Many people wonder why they should torture themselves and read about blood, guts and severed limbs, of which there is a lot in this work. I agree that such descriptions do not add happiness, but I would not dwell on them either; in war this is not the main thing and this is not the worst thing. It is much more terrible to lose your human appearance, dignity, to break under pressure and torture, to betray your loved ones for the sake of a piece of bread or an extra minute of life. This is what you need to be afraid of. Any military action a priori presupposes a “meat grinder,” the description of which is intended to prove that war is contrary to human nature. War is like a Russian revolt - “senseless and merciless.” And it doesn’t matter at all who started it and why. Despite the fact that the heroes of Remarque’s book are German soldiers (and as you remember, it was Germany that started both world wars), this makes them no less sorry.

Not only people suffer from war... well-known words come to mind: it seems that the earth itself is groaning, drenched in blood. For example, I still get chills when I remember the episode with the wounded horses.

The screams continue. These are not people, people cannot scream so terribly.
Kat says:
Wounded horses.
I've never heard horses scream before, and I can't believe it. It is the long-suffering world itself that groans; in these groans one can hear all the torments of living flesh, burning, terrifying pain. We turned pale. Detering stands up to his full height:
Monsters, flayers! Yes, shoot them!
Detering is a peasant and knows a lot about horses. He's excited. And the shooting, as if on purpose, almost completely died down. This makes their screams heard even more clearly. We no longer understand where they come from in this suddenly quiet, silvery world; invisible, ghostly, they are everywhere, somewhere between heaven and earth, they are becoming more and more piercing, it seems there will be no end to this - Detering is already beside himself with rage and shouts loudly:
Shoot them, shoot them, damn you!

This moment penetrates to the depths of your soul, like an icy January wind, you begin to appreciate life more deeply. The main thing that I learned from this book by Remarque is that when the news once again talks about the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere, this is not an empty ringing, behind these familiar and seemingly tedious reports hide the eyes of real people who All these horrors are seen every day, who, like you and me, cannot simply isolate themselves from what is happening - not open a book or turn on the TV. They cannot escape from blood and horror, for them this is not fiction or an exaggeration of the author, this is their life, which the big and important men who gave the order to drop the bombs decided for them.

My verdict: be sure to read and always remember that war is not a dry news report about the number of killed and wounded somewhere in the Middle East, where they are constantly at war, this can happen to anyone and it is, indeed, very scary.

The novel All Quiet on the Western Front was published in 1929. Many publishers doubted his success - he was too frank and uncharacteristic of the ideology of glorification of Germany, which lost the First World War, that existed in society at that time. Erich Maria Remarque, who volunteered for the war in 1916, in his work was not so much the author as a merciless witness of what he saw on the European battlefields. Honestly, simply, without unnecessary emotions, but with merciless cruelty, the author described all the horrors of the war that irrevocably destroyed his generation. “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a novel not about heroes, but about victims, among whom Remarque counts both young people who died and those who escaped from shells.

Main characters works - yesterday's schoolchildren, like the author, who went to the front as volunteers (students of the same class - Paul Beumer, Albert Kropp, Müller, Leer, Franz Kemmerich), and their older comrades (the mechanic Tjaden, the peat worker Haye Westhus, the peasant Detering, Stanislav Katchinsky, who knows how to get out of any situation) - they don’t so much live and fight as they try to escape from death. Young people who fell for the bait of teacher propaganda quickly realized that war is not an opportunity to valiantly serve their homeland, but the most ordinary massacre, in which there is nothing heroic and humane.

The first artillery shelling immediately put everything in its place - the authority of the teachers collapsed, taking with it the worldview that they instilled. On the battlefield, everything that the heroes were taught in school turned out to be unnecessary: physical laws were replaced by the laws of life, which consist in the knowledge of “how to light a cigarette in the rain and wind” and what’s the best way... to kill - “It is best to strike with a bayonet in the stomach, and not in the ribs, because the bayonet does not get stuck in the stomach”.

The First World War not only divided nations - it severed the internal connection between two generations: while "parents" they also wrote articles and made speeches about heroism, "children" passed through hospitals and dying people; while "parents" still placed service to the state above all else, "children" already knew that there is nothing stronger than the fear of death. According to Paul, awareness of this truth did not make any of them "neither a rebel, nor a deserter, nor a coward", but it gave them a terrible insight.

Internal changes in the heroes began to occur even at the stage of barracks drill, which consisted of meaningless trumping, standing at attention, pacing, taking guard, turning right and left, clicking heels and constant abuse and nagging. Preparation for war made young men “callous, distrustful, ruthless, vindictive, rude”- the war showed them that these were the qualities they needed in order to survive. Barracks training developed future soldiers “a strong feeling of mutual cohesion, always ready to be translated into action”- the war turned him into "the only good thing" what she could give to humanity - "partnership" . But at the time of the beginning of the novel, only twelve people remained from former classmates instead of twenty: seven had already been killed, four were wounded, one ended up in an insane asylum, and at the time of its completion - no one. Remarque left everyone on the battlefield, including his main character, Paul Bäumer, whose philosophical reasoning constantly broke into the fabric of the narrative in order to explain to the reader the essence of what was happening, understandable only to a soldier.

The war for the heroes of “All Quiet on the Western Front” takes place in three art spaces: at the forefront, at the front and in the rear. The worst thing is where shells are constantly exploding, and attacks are replaced by counterattacks, where flares burst "rain of white, green and red stars", and the wounded horses scream so terribly, as if the whole world was dying with them. There, in this "ominous whirlpool", which draws a person in, "paralyzing all resistance", the only "friend, brother and mother" For a soldier, the earth becomes, because it is in its folds, depressions and hollows that one can hide, obeying the only instinct possible on the battlefield - the instinct of the beast. Where life depends only on chance, and death awaits a person at every step, anything is possible - hiding in coffins torn apart by bombs, killing your own to save them from suffering, regretting bread eaten by rats, listening to people scream in pain for several days in a row. a dying man who cannot be found on the battlefield.

The rear part of the front is a borderline space between military and civilian life: there is a place for simple human joys - reading newspapers, playing cards, talking with friends, but all this one way or another passes under the sign of something ingrained in the blood of every soldier "coarsening". A shared restroom, stealing food, waiting for comfortable boots that are passed from hero to hero as they are wounded and die are completely natural things for those who are used to fighting for their existence.

The vacation given to Paul Bäumer and his immersion into the space of peaceful existence finally convince the hero that people like him will never be able to return back. Eighteen-year-old boys, just getting acquainted with life and beginning to love it, were forced to shoot at it and hit themselves right in the heart. For people of the older generation who have strong ties to the past (wives, children, professions, interests), the war is a painful, but still temporary break in life; for the young, it is a stormy stream that easily tore them out of the shaky soil of parental love and children's rooms. with bookshelves and carried it to who knows where.

The pointlessness of war, in which one person must kill another just because someone from above told them that they were enemies, forever cut off faith in yesterday's schoolchildren in human aspirations and progress. They believe only in war, so they have no place in peaceful life. They believe only in death, which sooner or later everything ends, so they have no place in life as such. The “Lost Generation” has nothing to talk about with their parents, who know the war from rumors and newspapers; The “lost generation” will never pass on their sad experience to those who come after them. You can only learn what war is in the trenches; the whole truth about it can only be told in a work of art.

No change on the Western Front

But, strictly speaking, we are not entitled to all this at all. The management is not capable of such generosity. We were just lucky.

Our section headed the line that formed near the kitchen. We began to get impatient as the unsuspecting cook was still waiting for something.

Finally Katchinsky shouted to him:

- Well, open up your glutton, Heinrich! And so you can see that the beans are cooked!

The cook shook his head sleepily:

- Let everyone gather first.

Tjaden grinned:

- And we are all here!

The cook still didn't notice anything:

- Keep your pocket wider! Where are the others?

- They are not on your payroll today! Some are in the infirmary, and some are in the ground!

Upon learning of what had happened, the kitchen god was struck down. He was even shaken:

- And I cooked for a hundred and fifty people!

Kropp poked him in the side with his fist.

“That means we’ll eat our fill at least once.” Come on, start the distribution!

At that moment, a sudden thought struck Tjaden. His face, sharp as a mouse, lit up, his eyes squinted slyly, his cheekbones began to play, and he came closer:

- Heinrich, my friend, so you got bread for a hundred and fifty people?

The dumbfounded cook nodded absently.

Tjaden grabbed him by the chest:

- And sausage too?

The cook nodded again with his head as purple as a tomato. Tjaden's jaw dropped:

- And tobacco?

- Well, yes, that's it.

Tjaden turned to us, his face beaming:

- Damn it, that's lucky! After all, now everything will go to us! It will be - just wait! – that’s right, exactly two servings per nose!

But then the Tomato came to life again and said:

- It won’t work that way.

Now we, too, shook off our sleep and squeezed closer.

- Hey, carrot, why won’t it work? – asked Katchinsky.

- Yes, because eighty is not one hundred and fifty!

“But we’ll show you how to do it,” Muller grumbled.

“You’ll get the soup, so be it, but I’ll give you bread and sausage only for eighty,” Tomato continued to persist.

Katchinsky lost his temper:

“I wish I could send you to the front line just once!” You received food not for eighty people, but for the second company, that’s it. And you will give them away! The second company is us.

We were in a very belligerent mood, and, probably, things would have come to a fight if the company commander had not appeared at the scene. Having learned what we were arguing about, he only said:

- Yes, yesterday we had big losses...

Then he looked into the cauldron:

– And the beans seem to be quite good.

The tomato nodded:

- With lard and beef.

- Bring me a plate too. And distribute portions for everyone. Why should good things disappear?

Tomato's face took on a stupid expression. Tjaden danced around him:

- It’s okay, this won’t hurt you! He imagines that he is in charge of the entire quartermaster service. Now get started, old rat, and make sure you don’t miscalculate!..

“All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque. Erich Maria Remarque

Chapter 10

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