All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

They’re either in the dressing-station or pushing up daisies.”

These first minutes with the mask decide between life and death: is it air-tight? I remember the awful sights in the hospital: the gas patients who in day-long suffocation cough up their burnt lungs in clots.

Next day there was an issue of Edamer cheese. 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. We drink it of course; but are not greatly comforted.

How long has it been? Weeks—months—years? Only days.

terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;—but it kills, if a man thinks about it.

The sky is blue, between the leaves of the chestnuts rises the green spire of St. Margaret’s Church. This is good, I like it. But I cannot get on with the people. My mother is the only one who asks no questions. Not so my father. He wants me to tell him about the front; he is curious in a way that I find stupid and distressing; I no longer have any real contact with him.

wondering just how a war gets started. “Mostly by one country badly offending another,” answers Albert with a slight air of superiority. The Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. “A country? I don’t follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat.” “Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?” growls Kropp. “I don’t mean that at all. One people offends the other——” “Then I haven’t any business here at all,” replies Tjaden, “I don’t feel myself offended.” “Well, let me tell you,” says Albert sourly, “it doesn’t apply to tramps like you.” “Then I can be going home right away,” retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh. “Ach, man! he means the people as a whole, the State——” exclaims Müller. “State, State”—Tjaden snaps his fingers contemptuously, “Gendarmes, police, taxes, that’s your State;—if that’s what you are talking about, no, thank you.” “That’s right,” says Kat, “you’ve said something for once, Tjaden. State and home-country, there’s a big difference.”