The Forgotten Soldier Quotes

“Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Then there was the war, and I married it because there was nothing else when I reached the age of falling in love.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of vengeance.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire, preparing to go about their business the next day, as usual.

One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort, considering oneself fortunate not to be describing the events in a letter home, writing from a hole in the mud. One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly, remembering that the torments of peace are trivial, and not worth any white hairs. Nothing is really serious in the tranquility of peace; only an idiot could be really disturbed by a question of salary.

One should read about war standing up, late at night, when one is tired, as I am writing about it now, at dawn, while my asthma attack wears off. And even now, in my sleepless exhaustion, how gentle and easy peace seems!”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“A day came when I should have died, and after that nothing seemed very important. So I have stayed as I am, without regret, separated from the normal human condition.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Only the victors have stories to tell. We, the vanquished, were all cowards and weaklings by then, whose memories, fears, and enthusiasms should not be remembered.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“What happened next? I retain nothing from those terrible minutes except indistinct memories which flash into my mind with sudden brutality, like apparitions, among bursts and scenes and visions that are scarcely imaginable. It is difficult even to even to try to remember moments during which nothing is considered, foreseen, or understood, when there is nothing under a steel helmet but an astonishingly empty head and a pair of eyes which translate nothing more than would the eyes of an animal facing mortal danger. There is nothing but the rhythm of explosions, more or less distant, more or less violent, and the cries of madmen, to be classified later, according to the outcome of the battle, as the cries of heroes or of murderers. And there are the cries of the wounded, of the agonizingly dying, shrieking as they stare at a part of their body reduced to pulp, the cries of men touched by the shock of battle before everybody else, who run in any and every direction, howling like banshees. There are the tragic, unbelievable visions, which carry from one moment of nausea to another: guts splattered across the rubble and sprayed from one dying man to another; tightly riveted machines ripped like the belly of a cow which has just been sliced open, flaming and groaning; trees broken into tiny fragments; gaping windows pouring out torrents of billowing dust, dispersing into oblivion all that remains of a comfortable parlor...”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“A day came when I should have died,
and after than nothing seemed very important,
so I stayed as I am, without regret
separated from the normal human condition.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Abandoned by a God in whom many of us believed, we lay prostrate and dazed in our demi-tomb. From time to time, one of us would look over the parapet to stare across the dusty plain into the east, from which death might bear down on us at any moment. We felt like lost souls, who had forgotten that men are made for something else, that time exists, and hope, and sentiments other than anguish; that friendship can be more than ephemeral, that love can sometimes occur, that the earth can be productive, and used for something other than burying the dead.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn't expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was continuously in doubt? Since Belgorod, terror had overturned all my preconceptions, and the pace of life had been so intense one no longer knew what elements of ordinary life to abandon in order to maintain some semblance of balance. I was still unresigned to the idea of death, but I had already sworn to myself during moments of intense fear that I would exchange anything - fortune, love, even a limb - if I could simply survive.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Only victors have stories to tell,
we the vanquished were then thought of
as cowards and weaklings whose memories
and fears should not be remembered.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“As I remember his laugh, there was nothing mad about it, it was more like the laugh of someone who has been the victim of a practical joke, a farce in which he had believed until suddenly he realized his folly.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Peace has brought me many pleasures, but nothing as powerful as that passion for survival in wartime, that faith in love, and that sense of absolutes. It often strikes me with horror that peace is really extremely monotonous. During the terrible moments of war one longs for peace with a passion that is painful to bear. But in peacetime one should never, even for an instant, long for war!”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Men who have embraced one idea can live only by and for that idea. Beyond it, they have nothing but their memories.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Human beings, rulers of the animal world, had created their own destruction. A process of natural selection, often very badly organized, periodically topples our crown.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“And I can remember a tear running down my frozen cheek—a tear neither of pain nor of joy but of emotion created by intense experience.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“The Russians-especially the Ukrainians-are very gay and hospitable, and ready to celebrate almost any occasion. I remember several pleasant gatherings at the homes of these enthusiastic people, during which everyone managed to forget the rivalries of the war. And I remember the girls, shouting with laughter when they had every reason to hate us-on another human scale altogether from the affected Parisian beauty, obsessed by her appearance and her cosmetics.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Je savais que nous devions passer par ces mauvais moments, pour ensuite connaître une humanité bienveillante. C’est du moins ce que nous avait dit notre Führer Adolf Hitler. Rien de cela n’existe. Qu’il repose en paix. Je ne lui en veux pas plus à lui qu’à tous les autres grands dirigeants de ce monde. Lui, au moins, bénéficie du doute puisqu’il n’a pas eu l’occasion d’établir ces lendemains de victoire. Tandis que les autres, qui ont organisé leur petite paix grelottante aux quatre coins du monde, les autres qui, stupidement hantés par une frousse injustifiée, et au nom d’une évolution éducatrice, ont laissé aux primates du globe l’occasion d’allumer un peu partout des incendies menaçants, ces autres là peuvent être jugés.

Des commerçants pendables. Des commerçants qui ne pouvant plus vendre de nègres, ont alors trouvé une astuce presque aussi rentable et qui vendent à présent les blancs aux nègres ! Tout ceci enrobé dans une petite politique mielleuse de vieille femme. Une politique qui ne prend pas position.

Sait-on jamais ? Le vent peut tourner. Evidemment, dans l’attitude de Hitler ou de Mussolini il y avait un autre style. Ceux-là se permirent de dire non aux vieilles convenances. A tous les potentats : industriels, francs-maçons, juifs ou culs-bénits. A cette époque, tous ces indolents étaient comme des carpettes : fous d’inquiétude devant leurs tirelires dans lesquelles le chef d’orchestre Hitler puisait à deux mains. Cela, évidemment, les rendait blêmes de voir gaspiller tout cet argent pour réaliser un grand opéra. Alors, les spectateurs chiasseux et apeurés grimpèrent sur la scène et étouffèrent le metteur en scène prodigue. Mais ils ne connaissent pas la paix. Les coliques les travaillent sans arrêt. Ils sont à la merci du premier chef de musique, noir ou jaune qui risque de les faire danser une autre danse. Mais, cette danse-là ne sera pas européenne et ils ne comprendront pas.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Guy Sajer ... who are you?
My parents were country people, born some hundreds of miles apart-a distance filled with difficulties, strange complexities, jumbled frontiers, and sentiments which were equivalent but untranslatable.
I was produced by this alliance, straddling this delicate combination, with only one life to deal with its manifold problems.
I was a child, but that is without significance. The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them.
Then there was the war, and I married it because there was nothing else when I reached the age of falling in love.
I had to shoulder a brutally heavy burden. Suddenly there were two flags for me to honor, and two lines of defense-the Siegfried and the Maginot-and powerful external enemies. I entered the service, dreamed, and hoped. I also knew cold and fear in places never seen by Lilli Marlene.
A day came when I should have died, and after that nothing seemed very important.
So I have stayed as I am, without regret, separated from the normal human condition.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier