2

I think of home and the writing I used to do. Now, writing poems and plays is completely unreal to me. There is no connection for me or any of the younger men to their home. The older men had lives they will return to, but for me and my companions, there is nothing to return to because our lives haven’t begun yet. Their lives are empty, but they are not sad.
I know that Muller is very sympathetic about Kemmerich. He truly cares about him. But they all understand that Kemmerich can no longer use the boots, and Muller wants them because they no longer serve a purpose. As a foot-solider, it is better that he should have them than an orderly at the hospital. I think back to when they first enlisted, when they were young and innocent. They were romantic and had no real plans for the future. They were just boys. But by the end of their training, they had their innocence knocked out of them by the army and its drills. There were just tools, not heroes, and even the drills they learned during training were mostly unimportant.
At the start of their training I, Kropp, Muller, and Kemmerich were assigned to No. 9 platoon, where our commander was Corporal Himmelstoss, a short little man who was a strict and mean officer. Before the army, he was just a postman. Himmelstoss was especially mean to the boys, forcing them to do all kinds of ridiculous drills to break their spirits. He forced me to do things like clean the Corporal's Mess with a toothbrush. He made us clear snow with a hand-broom and a dust-pan in the cold until a superior officer stopped him. He heaped many different abuses on the boys. Finally, Kropp and I rebelled against him and refused to follow his orders. After that, he abused us and called them swine, but his power was gone. Through the whole training period, his abuse made the boys hard and mean, but it gave them a sense of comradeship that made the trenches of the real war survivable.
I go to visit Kemmerich again the next morning. More wounded are flooding into the hospital. Kemmerich now knows that his foot has been amputated. I try to encourage him, but Kemmerich knows he is going to die. He gives me his boots to give to Muller, and I stays by him, sad that someone I grew up with is dying so horribly. I has seen death before, but it is harder when it is an old friend. Kemmerich slowly fades, barely talking. Finally, when he begins to die, I goes to get a doctor. The doctor passes him off to an orderly, because he has no time to look at Kemmerich. The orderly indifferently tells me that Kemmerich is the seventeenth to die that day. I take his things and leaves. On the way back to camp, I feel the breeze in my face and begins to run, angry at Kemmerich's death but happy to be alive himself. At camp, I give Muller the boots, and they drink rum and tea.

* Embittered: to make somebody feel bitter or aggrieved
“At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent…” (Remarque 21-2).

* Esprit de corps: a feeling of pride in belonging to a group and a sense of identification with it
“But by far the most important thing it awakened in us a strong practical sense of esprit de corps…” (Remarque, 26).


Officials can steer their way into any direction where they see fit, not only for themselves but also for the greater good. President Wilson didn't want to go to war, he didnt want to intervene between Germany and France, instead he just wanted justice without all the blood and heartache since he was afraid the once he steered into those dangerous rocks that he could not steer back out.

Even when times get hard we have to always have some sort of hope or dreams to look back on so we can get through the day or the week or whatever rough time we are going through. Even though things may look rough, they will and can get better.