All Quiet on the Western Front 10 – Wheen · Verses Across
Literature · Wars
All Quiet on the Western Front 10Chapter 10
18
Literature · Wars
All Quiet on the Western Front 10
Chapter 10
WheenEnglish
We have dropped in for a good job. Eight of us have to guard a village that has been abandoned because it is being shelled too heavily.
In particular we have to watch the supply dump as that is not yet empty. We are supposed to provision ourselves from the same store. We are just the right people for that;--Kat, Albert, Müller, Tjaden, Detering, our whole gang is there. Haie is dead, though. But we are mighty lucky all the same, all the other squads have had more casualties than we have.
We select, as a dug-out, a reinforced concrete cellar into which steps lead down from above. The entrance is protected by a separate concrete wall.
Now we develop an immense industry. This is an opportunity not only to stretch one's legs, but to stretch one's soul also. We make the best use of such opportunities. The war is too desperate to allow us to be sentimental for long. That is only possible so long as things are not going too badly. After all, we cannot afford to be anything but matter-of-fact. So matter-of-fact, indeed, that I often shudder when a thought from the days before the war comes momentarily into my head. But it does not stay long.
We have to take things as lightly as we can, so we make the most of every opportunity, and nonsense stands stark and immediate beside horror. It cannot be otherwise, that is how we hearten ourselves. So we zealously set to work to create an idyll--an idyll of eating and sleeping, of course.
The floor is first covered with mattresses which we haul in from the houses. Even a soldier's behind likes to sit soft. Only in the middle of the floor is there any clear space. Then we furnish ourselves with blankets and eiderdowns, luxurious soft affairs. There is plenty of everything to be had in the town. Albert and I find a mahogany bed which can be taken to pieces, with a sky of blue silk and a lace coverlet. We sweat like monkeys moving it in, but a man cannot let a thing like that slip, and it would certainly be shot to pieces in a day or two.
Kat and I do a little patrolling through the houses. In very short time we have collected a dozen eggs and two pounds of fairly fresh butter. Suddenly there is a crash in the drawing room, and an iron stove hurtles through the wall past us and on, a yard from us out through the wall behind. Two holes. It comes from the house opposite where a shell has just landed. "The swine," grimaces Kat, and we continue our search. All at once we prick up our ears, hurry across, and suddenly stand petrified--there running up and down in a little sty are two live sucking pigs. We rub our eyes and look once again to make certain. Yes, they are still there. We seize hold of them--no doubt about it, two real young pigs.
This will make a grand feed. About twenty yards from our dug-out there is a small house that was used as an officers' billet. In the kitchen is an immense fireplace with two ranges, pots, pans, and kettles--everything, even to a stack of small chopped wood in an outhouse--a regular cook's paradise.
Two of our fellows have been out in the fields all the morning hunting for potatoes, carrots, and green peas. We are quite uppish and sniff at the tinned stuff in the supply dump, we want fresh vegetables. In the dining-room there are already two heads of cauliflower.
The sucking pigs are slaughtered. Kat sees to them. We want to make potato cakes to go with the roast. But we cannot find a grater for the potatoes. However, that difficulty is soon got over. With a nail we punch a lot of holes in a pot lid and there we have a grater. Three fellows put on thick gloves to protect their fingers against the grater, two others peel the potatoes, and the business gets going.
Kat takes charge of the sucking pigs, the carrots, the peas, and the cauliflower. He even mixes a white sauce for the cauliflower. I fry the pancakes, four at a time. After ten minutes I get the knack of tossing the pan so that the pancakes which are done on the one side sail up, turn in the air and are caught again as they come down. The sucking pigs are baked whole. We all stand round them as before an altar.
In the meantime we receive visitors, a couple of wireless-men, who are generously invited to the feed. They sit in the living-room where there is a piano. One of them plays, the other sings 'An der Weser.' He sings feelingly, but with a rather Saxon accent. All the same it moves us as we stand at the fireplace preparing the good things.
Then we begin to realize that we are in for trouble. The observation balloons have spotted the smoke from our chimney, and the shells start to drop on us. They are those damned spraying little daisy-cutters that make only a small hole and scatter widely close to the ground. They keep dropping closer and closer all round us; still we cannot leave the grub in the lurch. A couple of splinters whizz through the top of the kitchen window. The roast is already cooked. But frying the pancakes is getting difficult. The explosions come so fast that the splinters strike often and oftener against the wall of the house and sweep in through the window. Whenever I hear a shell coming I drop down on one knee with the pan and the pancakes, and duck behind the wall of the window. Immediately afterwards I am up again and going on with the frying.
The Saxons stop singing--a fragment has smashed into the piano. At last everything is ready and we organize the transport of it back to the dug-out. After the next explosion two men dash across the fifty yards to the dug-out with the pots of vegetables. We see them disappear.
The next shot. Everyone ducks and then two more trot off, each with a big can of finest grade coffee, and reach the dug-out before the next explosion.
Then Kat and Kropp seize the masterpiece--the big dish with the brown, roasted sucking pigs. A screech, a knee bend, and away they race over the fifty yards of open country.
I stay to finish frying my last four pancakes; twice I have to drop on the floor;--after all, it means four pancakes more, and they are my favourite dish.
Then I grab the plate with the great pile of cakes and squeeze myself behind the house door. A hiss, a crash, and I gallop off with the plate clamped against my chest with both hands. I am almost in, I run like a deer, sweep round the wall, fragments clatter against the concrete, I tumble down the cellar steps, my elbows are skinned, but I have not lost a single pancake, nor even broken the plate.
About two o'clock we start the meal. It lasts till six. We drink coffee until half-past seven--officers' coffee from the supply dump--and smoke officers' cigars and cigarettes--also from the supply dump. Punctually at half-past seven we begin the evening meal. About ten o'clock we throw the bones of the sucking pigs outside the door. Then there is cognac and rum--also from the blessed supply dump--and once again long, fat cigars with belly-bands. Tjaden suggests that it lacks only one thing: Girls from an officers' brothel.
Late in the evening we hear mewing. A little grey cat sits in the entrance. We entice it in and give it something to eat. And that wakes up our own appetites once more. Still chewing, we lie down to sleep.
But the night is bad. We have eaten too much fat. Fresh baby pig is very griping to the bowels. There is an everlasting coming and going in the dug-out. Two, three men with their pants down are always sitting about outside and cursing. I have been out nine times myself. About four o'clock in the morning we reach a record: all eleven men, guards and visitors, are squatting outside.
Burning houses stand out like torches against the night. Shells lumber across and crash down. Munition columns tear along the street. On one side the supply dump has been ripped open. In spite of all the flying fragments the drivers of the munition columns pour in like a swarm of bees and pounce on the bread. We let them have their own way. If we said anything it would only mean a good hiding for us. So we go differently about it. We explain that we are the guard and so know our way about, we get hold of the tinned stuff and exchange it for things we are short of. What does it matter anyhow--in a while it will all be blown to pieces. For ourselves we take some chocolate from the depot and eat it in slabs. Kat says it is good for loose bowels.
Almost a fortnight passes thus in eating, drinking, and roaming about. No one disturbs us. The town gradually vanishes under the shells and we lead a charmed life. So long as any part of the supply dump still stands we don't worry, we desire nothing better than to stay here till the end of the war.
Tjaden has become so fastidious that he only half smokes his cigars. With his nose in the air he explains to us that he was brought up that way. And Kat is most cheerful. In the morning his first call is: "Emil, bring in the caviare and coffee." We put on extraordinary airs, every man treats the other as his valet, bounces him and gives him orders. "There is something itching under my foot; Kropp, my man, catch that louse at once," says Leer, poking out his leg at him like a ballet girl, and Albert drags him up the stairs by the foot. "Tjaden!"--"What?"--"Stand at ease, Tjaden; and what's more, don't say 'What,' say 'Yes, Sir,'--now: Tjaden!" Tjaden retorts in the well-known phrase from Goethe's "Götz von Berlichingen," with which he is always very free.
After eight more days we receive orders to go back. The palmy days are over. Two big motor lorries take us away. They are stacked high with planks. Nevertheless, Albert and I erect on top our four-poster bed complete with blue silk canopy, mattress, and two lace coverlets. And behind it at the head is stowed a bag full of choice edibles. We often dip into it, and the tough ham sausages, the tins of liver sausages, the conserves, the boxes of cigarettes rejoice our hearts. Each man has a bag to himself.
Kropp and I have rescued two big red armchairs as well. They stand inside the bed, and we sprawl back in them as in a theatre box. Above us swells the silken cover like a baldaquin. Each man has a long cigar in his mouth. And thus from aloft we survey the scene.
Between us stands a parrot-cage that we found for the cat. She is coming with us, and lies in the cage before her saucer of meat, and purrs.
Slowly the lorries roll down the road. We sing. Behind us the shells are sending up fountains from the now utterly abandoned town.
A few days later we are sent out to evacuate a village. On the way we meet the fleeing inhabitants trundling their goods and chattels along with them in wheel-barrows, perambulators, and on their backs. Their figures are bent, their faces full of grief, despair, haste, and resignation. The children hold on to their mothers' hands, and often an older girl leads the little ones who stumble onward and are for ever looking back. A few carry miserable-looking dolls. All are silent as they pass us by.
We are marching in column; the French do not fire on a town in which there are still inhabitants. But a few minutes later the air screams, the earth heaves, cries ring out; a shell has landed among the rear squad. We scatter and fling ourselves down on the ground, but at that moment I feel the instinctive alertness leave me which hitherto has always made me do unconsciously the right thing under fire; the thought leaps up with a terrible, throttling fear: "You are lost"--and the next moment a blow sweeps like a whip over my left leg. I hear Albert cry out; he is beside me.
"Quick, up, Albert!" I yell, for we are lying unsheltered in the open field.
He staggers up and runs. I keep beside him. We have to get over a hedge; it is higher than we are. Kropp seizes a branch, I heave him up by the leg, he cries out, I give him a swing and he flies over. With one leap I follow him and fall into a ditch that lies behind the hedge.
Our faces are smothered with duck-weed and mud, but the cover is good. So we wade in up to our necks. Whenever a shell whistles we duck our heads under the water. After we have done this a dozen times, I am exhausted.
"Let's get away, or I'll fall in and drown," groans Albert.
"Where has it got you?" I ask him.
"In the knee, I think."
"Can you run?"
"I think----"
"Then out!"
We make for the ditch beside the road, and stooping, run along it. The shelling follows us. The road leads toward the munition dump. If that goes up there won't be a man of us with his head left on his shoulders. So we change our plan and run diagonally across country.
Albert begins to drag. "You go, I'll come on after," he says, and throws himself down.
I seize him by the arm and shake him. "Up, Albert, if once you lie down you'll never get any farther. Quick, I'll hold you up."
At last we reach a small dug-out. Kropp pitches in and I bandage him up. The shot is just a little above his knee. Then I take a look at myself. My trousers are bloody and my arm, too. Albert binds up my wounds with his field dressing. Already he is no longer able to move his leg, and we both wonder how we managed to get this far. Fear alone made it possible; we would have run even if our feet had been shot off;--we would have run on the stumps.
I can still crawl a little. I call out to a passing ambulance wagon which picks us up. It is full of wounded. There is an army medical lance-corporal with it who sticks an anti-tetanus needle into our chests.
At the dressing station we arrange matters so that we lie side by side. They give us a thin soup which we spoon down greedily and scornfully, because we are accustomed to better times but are hungry all the same.
"Now for home, Albert," I say.
"Let's hope so," he replies, "I only wish I knew what I've got."
The pain increases. The bandages burn like fire. We drink and drink, one glass of water after another.
"How far above the knee am I hit?" asks Kropp.
"At least four inches, Albert," I answer. Actually it is perhaps one.
"I've made up my mind," he says after a while, "if they take off my leg, I'll put an end to it. I won't go through life as a cripple."
So we lie there with our thoughts and wait.
In the evening we are hauled on to the chopping-block. I am frightened and think quickly what I ought to do; for everyone knows that the surgeons in the dressing stations amputate on the slightest provocation. Under the great pressure of business that is much simpler than complicated patching. I think of Kemmerich. Whatever happens I will not let them chloroform me, even if I have to crack a couple of their skulls.
It is all right. The surgeon pokes around in the wound and a blackness comes before my eyes. "Don't carry on so," he says gruffly, and hacks away. The instruments gleam in the bright light like malevolent animals. The pain is insufferable. Two orderlies hold my arms fast, but I break loose with one of them and try to crash into the surgeon's spectacles just as he notices and springs back. "Chloroform the scoundrel," he roars madly.
Then I become quiet. "Pardon me, Herr Doctor, I will keep still, but do not chloroform me."
"Well now," he cackles and takes up his instrument again. He is a fair fellow, not more than thirty years old, with scars and disgusting gold spectacles. Now I see that he is tormenting me, he is merely raking about in the wound and looking up surreptitiously at me over his glasses. My hands squeeze around the grips, I'll kick the bucket before he will get a squeak out of me.
He has fished out a piece of shell and tosses it to me. Apparently he is pleased at my self-control, for he seems to be more considerate of me now and says: "To-morrow you'll be off home." Then I am put in plaster. When I am back again with Kropp I tell him that apparently a hospital train comes in to-morrow morning.
"We must work the army medical sergeant-major so that we can keep together, Albert."
I manage to slip the sergeant-major two of my cigars with belly-bands, and then tip the word to him. He smells the cigars and says: "Have you got any more of them?"
"Another good handful," I say, "and my comrade," I point to Kropp, "he has some as well. We might possibly be glad to hand them to you out of the window of the hospital train in the morning."
He understands, of course, smells them once again and says: "Done."
We cannot get a minute's sleep all night. Seven fellows die in our ward. One of them sings hymns in a high cracked tenor before he begins to gurgle. Another has crept out of his bed to the window. He lies in front of it as though he wants to look out for the last time.
Our stretchers stand on the platform. We wait for the train. It rains and the station has no roof. Our covers are thin. We have waited already two hours.
The sergeant-major looks after us like a mother. Although I feel pretty bad I do not let our scheme out of my mind. Occasionally I let him see the packet and give him one cigar in advance. In exchange the sergeant-major covers us over with a water-proof sheet.
"Albert, old man," I suddenly bethink myself, "our four poster and the cat----"
"And the club chairs," he adds.
Yes, the club chairs with red plush. In the evening we used to sit in them like lords, and intended later on to let them out by the hour. One cigarette per hour. It might have turned into a regular business, a real good living.
"And our bags of grub, too, Albert."
We grow melancholy. We might have made some use of the things. If only the train left one day later Kat would be sure to find us and bring us the stuff.
What damned hard luck! In our bellies there is gruel, mean hospital stuff, and in our bags roast pork. But we are so weak that we cannot work up any more excitement about it.
The stretchers are sopping wet by the time the train arrives in the morning. The sergeant-major sees to it that we are put in the same car. There is a crowd of red-cross nurses. Kropp is stowed in below. I am lifted up and put into the bed above him.
"Good God!" I exclaim suddenly.
"What is it?" asks the sister.
I cast a glance at the bed. It is covered with clean snow-white linen, that even has the marks of the iron still on it. And my shirt has gone six weeks without being washed and is terribly muddy.
"Can't you get in by yourself?" asks the sister gently.
"Why yes," I say in a sweat, "but take off the bed cover first."
"What for?"
I feel like a pig. Must I get in there?--"It will get----" I hesitate.
"A little bit dirty?" she suggests helpfully. "That doesn't matter, we will wash it again afterwards."
"No, no, not that----" I say excitedly. I am not equal to such overwhelming refinement.
"When you have been lying out there in the trenches, surely we can wash a sheet," she goes on.
I look at her, she is young and crisp, spotless and neat, like everything here; a man cannot realize that it isn't for officers only, and feels himself strange and in some way even alarmed.
All the same, the woman is a tormentor, she is going to force me to say it. "It is only----" I try again, surely she must know what I mean.
"What is it then?"
"Because of the lice," I bawl out at last.
She laughs. "Well, they must have a good day for once, too."
Now I don't care any more. I scramble into bed and pull up the covers.
A hand gropes over the bed-cover. The sergeant-major. He goes off with the cigars.
An hour later we notice that we are moving.
At night I cannot sleep. Kropp is restless too. The train rides easily over the rails. I cannot realize it all yet; a bed, a train, home. "Albert!" I whisper.
"Yes----"
"Do you know where the latrine is?"
"Over to the right of the door, I think."
"I'm going to have a look." It is dark, I grope for the edge of the bed and cautiously try to slide down. But my foot finds no support, I begin to slip, the plaster leg is no help, and with a crash I lie on the floor.
"Damn!" I say.
"Have you bumped yourself?" asks Kropp.
"You could hear that well enough for yourself," I growl, "my head----"
A door opens in the rear of the car. The sister comes with a light and looks at me.
"He has fallen out of bed----"
She feels my pulse and smooths my forehead. "You haven't any fever, though."
"No." I agree.
"Have you been dreaming then?" she asks.
"Perhaps----" I evade. The interrogation starts again. She looks at me with her clear eyes, and the more wonderful and sweet she is the less am I able to tell her what I want.
I am lifted up into bed again. That will be all right. As soon as she goes I must try to climb down again. If she were an old woman, it might be easier to say what a man wants, but she is so very young, at the most twenty-five, it can't be done, I cannot possibly tell her.
Then Albert comes to my rescue, he is not bashful, it makes no difference to him who is upset. He calls to the sister. She turns round. "Sister, he wants----" but no more does Albert know how to express it modestly and decently. Out there we say it in a single word, but here, to such a lady---- All at once he remembers his school days and finishes hastily: "He wants to leave the room, sister."
"Ah!" says the sister, "but he shouldn't climb out of his bed with his plaster bandage. What do you want then?" she says, turning to me.
I am in mortal terror at this new turn, for I haven't any idea what the things are called professionally. She comes to my help.
"Little or big?"
This shocking business! I sweat like a pig and say shyly: "Well, only quite a little one----"
At any rate, it produces the effect.
I get a bottle. After a few hours I am no longer the only one, and by morning we are quite accustomed to it and ask for what we want without any false modesty.
The train travels slowly. Sometimes it halts and the dead are unloaded. It halts often.
Albert is feverish. I feel miserable and have a good deal of pain, but the worst of it is that apparently there are still lice under the plaster bandage. They itch terribly, and I cannot scratch myself.
We sleep through the days. The country glides quietly past the window. The third night we reach Herbstal. I hear from the sister that Albert is to be put off at the next station because of his fever. "How far does the train go?" I ask.
"To Cologne."
"Albert," I say, "we stick together; you see."
On the sister's next round I hold my breath and press it up into my head. My face swells and turns red. She stops. "Are you in pain?" "Yes," I groan, "all of a sudden."
She gives me a thermometer and goes on. I would not have been under Kat's tuition if I did not know what to do now. These army thermometers are not made for old soldiers. All one has to do is to drive the quicksilver up and then it stays there without falling again.
I stick the thermometer under my arm at a slant, and flip it steadily with my forefinger. Then I give it a shake. I send it up to 100.2°. But that is not enough. A match held cautiously near to it brings it up to 101.6°.
As the sister comes back, I blow myself out, breathe in short gasps, goggle at her with vacant eyes, toss about restlessly, and mutter in a whisper: "I can't bear it any longer----"
She notes me down on a slip of paper. I know perfectly well my plaster bandage will not be re-opened if it can be avoided. Albert and I are put off together.
We are in the same room in a Catholic Hospital. That is a piece of luck, the Catholic infirmaries are noted for their good treatment and good food. The hospital has been filled up from our train, there are a great many bad cases amongst them. We do not get examined to-day because there are too few surgeons. The flat trolleys with the rubber wheels pass continually along the corridor, and always with someone stretched at full length upon them. A damnable position, stretched out at full length like that;--the only time it is good is when one is asleep.
The night is very disturbed. No one can sleep. Toward morning we doze a little. I wake up just as it grows light. The door stands open and I hear voices from the corridor. The others wake up too. One fellow, who has been there a couple of days already explains it to us: "Up here in the corridor every morning the sisters say prayers. They call it Morning Devotion. And so that you can get your share, they leave the door open."
No doubt it is well meant, but it gives us aches in our head and bones.
"Such an absurdity!" I say, "just when a man dropped off to sleep."
"All the light cases are up here, that's why they do it here," he replies.
Albert groans. I get furious and call out: "Be quiet out there!"
A minute later a sister appears. In her black and white dress she looks like a beautiful tea-cosy. "Shut the door, will you, sister?" says someone.
"We are saying prayers, that is why the door is open," she responds.
"But we want to go on sleeping----"
"Prayer is better than sleep," she stands there and smiles innocently. "And it is seven o'clock already."
Albert groans again. "Shut the door," I snort.
She is quite disconcerted. Apparently she cannot understand. "But we are saying prayers for you too."
"Shut the door, anyway."
She disappears leaving the door open. The intoning of the Litany proceeds.
I feel savage, and say: "I'm going to count up to three. If it doesn't stop before then I'll let something fly."
"Me, too," says another.
I count up to five. Then I take hold of a bottle, aim, and heave it through the door into the corridor. It smashes into a thousand pieces. The praying stops. A swarm of sisters appear and reproach us in concert.
"Shut the door!" we yell.
They withdraw. The little one who came first is the last to go. "Heathen," she chirps, but shuts the door all the same. We have won.
At noon the hospital inspector arrives and abuses us. He threatens us with clink and all the rest of it. But a hospital inspector is just the same as a commissariat inspector, or any one else who wears a long dagger and shoulder straps, but is really a clerk, and is never considered even by a recruit as a real officer. So we let him talk. What can they do to us, anyway----
"Who threw the bottle?" he asks.
Before I can think whether I should report myself, someone says: "I did."
A man with a bristling beard sits up. Everyone is excited; why should he report himself?
"You?"
"Yes. I was annoyed because we were waked up unnecessarily and lost my senses so that I did not know what I was doing."
He talks like a book.
"What is your name?"
"Reinforcement-Reservist Josef Hamacher."
The inspector departs.
We are all curious. "But why did you say you did it? It wasn't you at all!"
He grins. "That doesn't matter. I have a shooting licence."
Then, of course, we all understand. Whoever has a shooting licence can do just whatever he pleases.
"Yes," he explains, "I got a crack in the head and they presented me with a certificate to say that I was periodically not responsible for my actions. Ever since then I've had a grand time. No one dares to annoy me. And nobody does anything to me."
"I reported myself because the shot amused me. If they open the door again to-morrow we will pitch another."
We are overjoyed. With Josef Hamacher in our midst we can now risk anything.
Then come the soundless, flat trollies to take us away.
The bandages are stuck fast. We bellow like steers.
There are eight men in our room. Peter, a curly black-haired fellow, has the worst injury;--a severe lung wound. Franz Wächter, alongside him, has a shot in the arm which didn't look too bad at first. But the third night he calls out to us, telling us to ring, he thinks he has a hæmorrhage.
I ring loudly. The night sister does not come. We have been making rather heavy demands on her during the night, because we have all been freshly bandaged, and so have a good deal of pain. One wants his leg placed so, another so, a third wants water, a fourth wants her to shake up his pillow;--in the end the buxom old body grumbled bad temperedly and slammed the doors. Now no doubt she thinks it is something of the same sort and so she is not coming.
We wait. Then Franz says: "Ring again."
I do so. Still she does not put in an appearance. In our wing there is only one night sister, perhaps she has something to do in one of the other rooms. "Franz, are you quite sure you are bleeding?" I ask. "Otherwise we shall be getting cursed again."
"The bandage is wet. Can't anybody make a light?"
That cannot be done either. The switch is by the door and none of us can stand up. I hold my thumb against the button of the bell till it becomes numb. Perhaps the sister has fallen asleep. They certainly have a great deal to do and are all overworked day after day. And added to that is the everlasting praying.
"Should we smash a bottle?" asks Josef Hamacher of the shooting licence.
"She wouldn't hear that any more than the bell."
At last the door opens. The old lady appears, mumbling. When she perceives Franz's trouble she begins to bustle, and says: "Why did not someone say I was wanted?"
"We did ring. And none of us here can walk."
He has been bleeding badly and she binds him up. In the morning we look at his face, it has become sharp and yellow, whereas the evening before he looked almost healthy. Now a sister comes oftener.
Sometimes there are red-cross voluntary aid sisters. They are pleasant, but often rather unskilled. They frequently give us pain when re-making our beds, and then are so frightened that they hurt us still more.
The nuns are more reliable. They know how they must take hold of us, but we would be more pleased if they were somewhat more cheerful. A few of them have real spirit, they are superb. There is no one who would not do anything for Sister Libertine, this marvellous sister, who spreads good cheer through the whole wing even when she can only be seen in the distance. And there are others like her. We would go through fire for her. A man cannot really complain, here he is treated by the nuns exactly like a civilian. On the other hand, just to think of a garrison hospital gives a man the creeps.
Franz Wachter does not regain his strength. One day he is taken away and does not come back. Josef Hamacher knows all about it: "We shan't see him again. They have put him in the dead room."
"What do you mean, Dead Room?" asks Kropp.
"Well, Dying Room----"
"What is that, then?"
"A little room at the corner of the building. Whoever is about to kick the bucket is put in there. There are two beds in it. It is generally called the Dying Room."
"But what do they do that for?"
"They don't have so much work to do afterwards. It is more convenient, too, because it lies right beside the lift to the mortuary. Perhaps also they do it for the sake of the others, so that no one in the ward dies in sympathy. And they can look after him better, too, if he is by himself."
"But what about him?"
Josef shrugs his shoulders. "Usually he doesn't take much notice any more."
"Does everybody know about it then?"
"Anyone who has been here long enough knows, of course."
In the afternoon Franz Wachter's bed has a fresh occupant. A couple of days later they take the new man away, too. Josef makes a significant gesture. We see many come and go.
Often relatives sit by the beds and weep or talk softly and awkwardly. One old woman will not go away, but she cannot stay there the whole night through. Another morning she comes very early, but not early enough; for as she goes up to the bed, someone else is in it already. She has to go to the mortuary. The apples that she has brought with her she gives to us.
And then little Peter begins to get worse. His temperature chart looks bad, and one day the flat trolley stands beside his bed. "Where to?" he asks.
"To the bandaging ward."
He is lifted out. But the sister makes the mistake of removing his tunic from the hook and putting it on the trolley too, so that she should not have to make two journeys. Peter understands immediately and tries to roll off the trolley. "I'm stopping here!"
They push him back. He cries out feebly with his shattered lung: "I won't go to the Dying Room."
"But we are going to the bandaging ward."
"Then what do you want my tunic for?" He can speak no more. Hoarse, agitated, he whispers: "Stopping here!"
They do not answer but wheel him out. At the door he tries to raise himself up. His black curly head sways, his eyes are full of tears. "I will come back again! I will come back again!" he cries.
The door shuts. We are all excited; but we say nothing. At last Josef says: "Many a man has said that. Once a man is in there, he never comes through."
I am operated on and vomit for two days. My bones will not grow together, so the surgeon's secretary says. Another fellow's have grown crooked; his are broken again. It is disgusting.
Among our new arrivals there are two young soldiers with flat feet. The chief surgeon discovers them on his rounds, and is overjoyed. "We'll soon put that right," he tells them, "we will just do a small operation, and then you will have perfectly sound feet. Enter them down, sister."
As soon as he is gone, Josef, who knows everything, warns them: "Don't you let him operate on you! That is a special scientific stunt of the old boy's. He goes absolutely crazy whenever he can get hold of anyone to do it on. He operates on you for flat feet, and there's no mistake, you don't have them any more; you have club feet instead, and have to walk all the rest of your life on sticks."
"What should a man do, then?" asks one of them.
"Say No. You are here to be cured of your wound, not your flat feet. Did you have any trouble with them in the field? No, well, there you are! At present you can still walk, but if once the old boy gets you under the knife you'll be cripples. What he wants is little dogs to experiment with, so the war is a glorious time for him, as it is for all the surgeons. You take a look down below at the staff; there are a dozen fellows hobbling around that he has operated on. A lot of them have been here all the time since 'fourteen and 'fifteen. Not a single one of them can walk better than he could before, almost all of them worse, and most only with plaster legs. Every six months he catches them again and breaks their bones afresh, and every time is going to be the successful one. You take my word, he won't dare to do it if you say No."
"Ach, man," says one of the two unfortunates, "better your feet than your brain-box. There's no telling what you'll get if you go back out there again. They can do with me just as they please, so long as I get back home. Better to have a club foot than be dead."
The other, a young fellow like ourselves, won't have it done. One morning the old man has the two hauled up and lectures and jaws at them so long, that in the end they consent. What else could they do?--They are mere privates, and he is a big bug. They are brought back chloroformed and plastered.
It is going badly with Albert. They have taken him and amputated his leg. The whole leg has been taken off from the thigh. Now he hardly speaks any more. Once he says he will shoot himself the first time he can get hold of his revolver again.
A new convoy arrives. Our room gets two blind men. One of them is a very youthful musician. The sisters never have a knife with them when they feed him; he has already snatched one from a sister. But in spite of this caution there is an incident. In the evening, while he is being fed, the sister is called away, and leaves the plate with the fork on his table. He gropes for the fork, seizes it and drives it with all his force against his heart, then he snatches up a shoe and strikes with it against the handle as hard as he can. We call for help and three men are necessary to take the fork away from him. The blunt prongs had already penetrated deep. He abuses us all night so that no one can go to sleep. In the morning he has lock-jaw.
Again beds become empty. Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death-gurgles. Even the Death Room is no use any more, it is too small; fellows die during the night in our room. They go even faster than the sisters can cope with them.
But one day the door flies open, the flat trolley rolls in, and there on the stretcher, pale, thin, upright and triumphant, with his shaggy head of curls sits Peter. Sister Libertine with beaming looks pushes him over to his former bed. He is back from the Dying Room. We have long supposed him dead.
He looks round: "What do you say now?"
And even Josef has to admit that it is the first time he has ever known of such a thing.
Gradually a few of us venture to stand up. And I am given crutches to hobble around on. But I do not make much use of them; I cannot bear Albert's gaze as I move about the room. His eyes always follow me with such a strange look. So I sometimes escape to the corridor;--there I can move about more freely.
On the next floor below are the abdominal and spine cases, head wounds and double amputations. On the right side of the wing are the jaw wounds, gas cases, nose, ear, and neck wounds. On the left the blind and the lung wounds, pelvis wounds, wounds in the joints, wounds in the testicles, wounds in the intestines. Here a man realizes for the first time in how many places a man can get hit.
Two fellows die of tetanus. Their skin turns pale, their limbs stiffen, at last only their eyes live--stubbornly. Many of the wounded have their shattered limbs hanging free in the air from a gallows; underneath the wound a basin is placed into which the pus drips. Every two or three hours the vessel is emptied. Other men lie in stretching bandages with heavy weights hanging from the end of the bed. I see intestine wounds that are constantly full of excreta. The surgeon's clerk shows me X-ray photographs of completely smashed hip-bones, knees, and shoulders.
A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.
I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world, see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing;--it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?
The oldest man in our room is Lewandowski. He is forty, and has already lain ten months in the hospital with a severe abdominal wound. Just in the last few weeks he has improved sufficiently to be able to hobble about doubled up.
For some days past he has been in great excitement. His wife has written to him from the little home in Poland where she lives, telling him that she has saved up enough money to pay for the fare, and is coming to see him.
She is already on the way and may arrive any day. Lewandowski has lost his appetite, he even gives away red cabbage and sausage after he has had a couple of mouthfuls. He goes round the room perpetually with the letter. Everyone has already read it a dozen times, the post-marks have been examined heaven knows how often, the address is hardly legible any longer for spots of grease and thumb-marks, and in the end what is sure to happen, happens: Lewandowski develops a fever, and has to go back to bed.
He has not seen his wife for two years. In the meantime she has given birth to a child, whom she is bringing with her. But something else occupies Lewandowski's thoughts. He had hoped to get permission to go out when his old woman came; for obviously seeing is all very well, but when a man gets his wife again after such a long time, if at all possible, a man wants something else besides.
Lewandowski has discussed it all with us at great length; in the army there are no secrets about such things. And what's more, nobody finds anything objectionable in it. Those of us who are already able to go out have told him of a couple of very good spots in the town, parks and squares, where he would not be disturbed; one of us even knows of a little room.
But what is the use, there Lewandowski lies in bed with his troubles. Life holds no more joy for him if he has to forego this affair. We console him and promise to get over the difficulty somehow or other.
One afternoon his wife appears, a tousled little thing with anxious, quick eyes like a bird, in a sort of black, crinkly mantilla with ribbons; heaven knows where she inherited the thing.
She murmurs something softly and stands shyly in the doorway. It terrifies her that there are six of us men present.
"Well, Marja," says Lewandowski, and gulps dangerously with his Adam's apple, "you can come in all right, they won't hurt you."
She goes the round and proffers each of us her hand. Then she produces the child, which in the interval has done something in its napkin. From a large handbag embroidered with pearls she takes out a clean one and makes the child fresh and presentable. This dispels her first embarrassment, and the two begin to talk.
Lewandowski is very fidgety, every now and then he squints across at us most unhappily with his round goggle eyes.
The time is favourable, the doctor's visit is over, at the most there couldn't be more than one sister left in the ward. So one of us goes out to prospect. He comes back and nods.
"Not a soul to be seen. Now's your chance, Johann, set to."
The two speak together in an undertone. The woman turns a little red and looks embarrassed. We grin good-naturedly and make pooh-poohing gestures, what does it matter! The devil take all the conventions, they were made for other times; here lies the carpenter Johann Lewandowski, a soldier shot to a cripple, and there is his wife; who knows when he will see her again? He wants to have her, and he should have her, good.
Two men stand at the door to forestall the sisters and keep them occupied if they chance to come along. They agree to stand guard for a quarter of an hour or thereabouts.
Lewandowski can only lie on his side, so one of us props a couple of pillows against his back. Albert gets the child to hold, we all turn round a bit, the black mantilla disappears under the bed-clothes, we make a great clatter and play skat noisily.
All goes well. I hold a club solo with four jacks which nearly goes the round. In the process we almost forget Lewandowski. After a while the child begins to squall, although Albert, in desperation, rocks it to and fro. Then there is a bit of creaking and rustling, and as we look up casually we see that the child has the bottle in its mouth, and is back again with its mother. The business is over.
We now feel ourselves like one big family, the woman is rather quieter, and Lewandowski lies there sweating and beaming.
He unpacks the embroidered handbag, and some good sausages come to light; Lewandowski takes up the knife with a flourish and saws the meat into slices.
With a handsome gesture he waves toward us--and the little woman goes from one to the other and smiles at us and hands round the sausage; she now looks quite handsome. We call her Mother, she is pleased and shakes up our pillows for us.
After a few weeks I have to go each morning to the massage department. There my leg is harnessed up and made to move. The arm has healed long since.
New convoys arrive from the line. The bandages are no longer made of cloth, but of white crêpe paper. Rag bandages have become scarce at the front.
Albert's stump heals well. The wound is almost closed. In a few weeks he should go off to an institute for artificial limbs. He continues not to talk much, and is much more solemn than formerly. He often breaks off in his speech and stares in front of him. If he were not here with us he would have shot himself long ago. But now he is over the worst of it, and he often looks on while we play skat.
I get convalescent leave.
My mother does not want to let me go away. She is so feeble. It is all much worse than it was last time.
Then I am sent on from the base and return once more to the line.
Parting from my friend Albert Kropp was very hard. But a man gets used to that sort of thing in the army.
