10

We have been assigned guard duty in an abandoned village. We were supposed to guard a supply dump inside the village. Kat, Albert, Tjaden, Muller, and Detering are all here. I think back to Haie Westhus, but he is dead. The men have settled into a basement of a bombed-out home and we try to relax. Kat and I went patrolling the empty houses and by some miracle we find two little pigs. We decided to make a huge feast with fresh vegetables. Two radio-men visit and join in the feast.
The festivities did not last long however, we soon realized our mistake. The smoke from the cooking has been spotted and the enemy begins to shell the house. But we refused to leave the food half-cooked. With shells exploding around us, we finished cooking and hauled our food back to the basement. We all made it safely through heavy shelling. The food stretches out over several hours, and we found officer's coffee and tobacco in the supply dump. That night, a kitten paid us a visit for food and we eat once again.
Unfortunately we have stuffed ourselves too much, however. The fat on the pig makes us all very sick, and we have to go to the bathroom frequently. By four in the morning, all eleven of us men are squatting outside, relieving ourselves. The supply dump is blown open and other soldiers swarm in and steal food. I and the other guards trade the other soldiers food for things we need, including chocolate to calm our bowels.
Two weeks have passed with my comrades and I happily wasting our days guarding the supply dump. We’ve done nothing but relax and treat ourselves. Another week and we are ordered back to the front. We’ve loaded some treasures on the truck, put the kitten in a birdcage, and headed back, signing happily.
We are sent out to evacuate a village. We don't expect the French to fire on them while escorting civilians, but they do. The men scatter. Albert is hit in the knee. I grab him and we run. We find a dug-out and stop. I realized he is wounded as well, and we bandage each other. Albert is having trouble moving his leg. I crawl to an ambulance, and we are taken to a dressing-station. While lying there, Albert swears he will kill himself rather than be a cripple. The surgeon comes to look at me, and I refuse to be chloroformed out of fear that they will amputate my leg. The surgeon pokes around in his wound, digs out a piece of shell, and tells me I was going home. Once back with Albert, I have a plan to make sure the two of us stay together. He gives the medical sergeant-major some cigars and promises him more if Albert and he stay together. The next morning, we are loaded onto the train.
I hear that Albert will be getting off the train to have his fever treated, so I fake a fever as well. We are put in a Catholic hospital, where we get good care but are awakened by the nuns praying in the morning. I shout for quiet, but one of the nuns tells me that prayer is more important than sleep. Finally, I throw a bottle at the door of their room, and the nuns, offended, shut their door. At noon, an investigator comes and yells at us for abusing the nuns. He asks who threw the bottle and another man, Josef, admits guilt before I can speak up. When the investigator leaves, the man tells everyone that he has a "shooting license," a certificate saying that he is not responsible for his actions.
That night, one of the men in their room complains that he is bleeding. It takes forever to get the night nurse to respond. When she does, we see that the man is looking very sick. Within a few days, he is gone. Josef tells them that they have taken him to the Dying Room, where terminal patients die. Later, another man, Peter, is rolled out of their room, but he realizes that they are taking him to die and tries to stop them. The last I see of him is his yelling, "I will come back again! I will come back again!"
I am operated on. It makes me very sick, and I vomit a lot. Two flat-footed men arrive at the hospital. Josef warns them that the Chief Surgeon likes experimenting on flat-footed men, trying to correct the problem, and that they should refuse any treatment that doesn't have anything to do with their injury. The men take his advice, but the surgeon wears them down and gets them to agree to the procedure. Meanwhile, Kropp loses his leg. He is threatening suicide. A new blind man tries to kill himself with a fork. As the days go on, many men die. The mood of the hospital is bleak, until one day, when Peter is brought back to their room. None of the men expected to see him come back from the Dying Room, but he is proud and much healthier. Josef is stunned.
As I get better, I can use crutches, but I avoids Albert's gaze. When I move around, he leaves the room, so he doesn't have to look at me. I wander the hallways of the hospital and see all the injured men dying. I think of how his hospital is just one of thousands in Germany, France, and Russia, and is blown away at the sheer number of soldiers dying:
"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" (Remarque, 263).

* Wire-less men: Radio men in the war
"We recieve visitors; a couple of wire-less men" (Remarque, 234).

* fastidious: concerned that even the smallest details should be just right
"Tjaden has become so fastidious that he only smokes half his cigars" (Remarque, 238).


Whien a country offers peace, it may sometimes just be a rouse to have their enemies lower their defenses.


I figure that people have to make the best of things in tough situations, i.e playing a piano in shell fire, because without some sort of escape people break down.