All Quiet on the Western Front: Chapters 6–7

Each man gets almost a quarter of a cheese. In one way that is all to the good, for Edamer is tasty — but in another way it is vile, because the fat red balls have long been a sign of a bad time coming. Our forebodings increase as rum is served out.

Now the outside world seems to draw a little nearer: if food can be brought up, think the recruits, then it can’t really be so bad. We do not disabuse them; we know that food is as important as ammunition and only for that reason must be brought up.

A corporal creeps in; he has a loaf of bread with him. Three people have had the luck to get through during the night and bring some provisions.

Only the mist is cold, this mysterious mist that trails over the dead and sucks from them their last, creeping life. By morning they will be pale and green and their blood congealed and black.

The blood beneath my skin brings fear and restlessness into my thoughts. They become feeble and tremble, they want warmth and life. They cannot persist without solace, without illusion, they are disordered before the naked picture of despair.

Our Company Commander has promised next turn of leave with three days extra to anyone who finds him. This is a powerful inducement, but we would do all that is possible without that for his cry is terrible.

This deathly exhalation from the shell-holes seems to be a mixture of chloroform and putrefaction, and fills us with nausea and retching.

Kat surprises Tjaden endeavouring with perfect equanimity to knock the driving-band off a dud.

And at each call a little group separates itself off, a small handful of dirty, pallid soldiers, a dreadfully small handful, and a dreadfully small remnant.

If it were possible for us to save them, then it would be seen how much we cared — we would have a shot at it though we went under ourselves; for we can be damned quixotic when we like; fear we do not know much about — terror of death, yes; but that is a different matter, that is physical.

Should I tell her how we once found three enemy trenches with their garrison all stiff as though stricken with apoplexy?

Then he begins to expound just whereabouts in France the break-through must come, and turns to me: "Now, shove ahead a bit out there with your everlasting trench warfare — Smash through the johnnies and then there will be peace.”

I read most of them with laudable zeal, but few of them really appealed to me. I preferred the other books, the moderns, which were of course much dearer.

Nothing — nothing —
My disquietude grows.

Mittelstaedt continues to upbraid him: “Look at Boettcher now, there’s a model for you to learn from.”