They arrive at a wooded area and get out of the trucks. A column of men pass by us in the mist as the trucks leave. The men load up with barbed wire and begin to walk to where it needs to be placed. We are ordered to put out our cigarettes, to avoid being a target. The horizon glows red, and we can see rockets being fired. Searchlights cross the sky, shooting down an airplane. We begin stringing the barbed wire, attaching it to iron stakes. I cut my hand while working. After a few hours, we are done with the job and settle in to wait for the trucks to pick us up. The new recruits are scared. The men begin to crawl away quickly as the shelling gets closer. One hits in the middle of their group. I catch into a new recruit, scared to death, holding his head to the ground. He is small and scared, and reminds me of Kemmerich. I grab the recruit's helmet and covers his rear with it. The men stay down and wait out the shelling. I hear cries in the distance. Once it quiets down, I shake the recruit and tell him it's safe. The recruit puts his helmet back on and realizes that he's soiled his underwear. I tell him that it happens to everyone and sends him off to throw his underwear away. Kropp reports that there are wounded some distance away. The cries, however, are of horses, not men. Detering, the farmer, loves horses and says that someone should shoot the horses and put them out of their misery. We listen to the screams for some time, getting more and more upset. Using binoculars, we see wounded horses running while soldiers move wounded men on stretchers. Finally, after the wounded men are moved, the soldiers start shooting the horses. It takes a long time to finish them off.
Our group starts heading back to the trucks. Just as they get back to the wooded area, the shelling begins again and trees explode around us. The men take cover in a cemetery, where they are trapped. I am hit in the head by something, and almost faint. Directly in front of me, a shell hits and blows a hole in the ground. I dive into the hole for cover, but the hole is part of a grave. I stay close to the dead body in the ground until Kat grabs me and tells me to put a gas mask on. We are being hit with mustard gas, which burns the lungs and will kill them very slowly if they breathe it. A few feet away, a new recruit is on the ground. I crawl to him, pull his gas mask on, and then jump back into the shell-hole. Kat, Kropp, and another man take cover there as well. We can barely see through the goggles of our gas masks. Gas starts collecting in the hole, but we are trapped by the shelling. A shell hits the ground and sends a coffin flying on top of them. It hits the fourth man and traps his arm. They free him and use wood from the coffin to make a splint for his broken arm. The gas masks are suffocating. The shelling stops, and I crawl out of the hole. The gas has cleared enough for me to pull my mask off. All around me, the graveyard is a pile of bodies that have been blown out of the ground. Kat and I stop to help a man whose hip has been destroyed. As they try to dress his wound, Paul sees that he has no underwear on and realizes that it is the boy he helped earlier. The boy is badly hurt and begs them not to leave him. Kat and I contemplate shooting him to end his pain, but before we can, others start to gather. We get a stretcher for the boy, and move on.
* aspirants: somebody who is hoping to achieve distinction or advancement
"Kat I hear some aspirants for the frying pan over there" (Remarque, 52).
* restive: uneasy and on the verge of resisting control
"Kat is restive, that's a bad sighn" (Remarque, 65).
THE GERMANS ARE GOING TO EAT THE WORLD!!!! *GASP* (Sorry I couldn't help it)
The fear of the Allies is that the German forces would consume all other nations and eventualy over take the world.
Sometimes you have to put others before yourself. Your life is important too but the life of someone else is just as meaningful. Friends and family will always be there for you so you should always be there for someone too.
No comments:
Post a Comment