All Quiet on the Western Front Read Free

bed covering arches over it. I kick Müller on the shin, for he is just about to tell Kemmerich what the orderlies told us outside: that Kemmerich has lost his foot. The leg is amputated. He looks ghastly, yellow and wan. In his face there are already the strained lines that we know so well, we have seen them now hundreds of times. They are not so much lines as marks. Under the skin the life no longer pulses, it has already pressed out the boundaries of the body. Death is working through from within. It already has command in the eyes. Here lies our comrade, Kemmerich, who a little while ago was roasting horse flesh with us and squatting in the shell-holes. He it is still and yet it is not he any longer. His features have become uncertain and faint, like a photographic plate from which two pictures have been taken. Even his voice sounds like ashes.
    I think of the time when we went away. His mother, a good plump matron, brought him to the station. She wept continually, her face was bloated and swollen. Kemmerich felt embarrassed, for she was the least composed of all; she simply dissolved into fat and water. Then she caught sight of me and took hold of my arm again and again, and implored me to look after Franz out there. Indeed he did have a face like a child, and such frail bones that after four weeks' pack-carrying he already had flat feet. But how can a man look after anyone in the field!
    "Now you will soon be going home," says Kropp. "You would have had to wait at least three or four months for your leave."
    Kemmerich nods. I cannot bear to look at his hands, they are like wax. Under the nails is the dirt of the trenches, it shows through blue-black like poison. It strikes me that these nails will continue to grow like lean fantastic cellar-plants long after Kemmerich breathes no more. I see the picture before me. They twist themselves into corkscrews and grow and grow, and with them the hair on the decaying skull, just like grass in a good soil, just like grass, how can it be possible---
    Müller leans over. "We have brought your things, Franz."
    Kemmerich signs with his hands. "Put them under the bed."
    Müller does so. Kemmerich starts on again about the watch. How can one calm him without making him suspicious?
    Müller reappears with a pair of airman's boots. They are fine English boots of soft, yellow leather which reach to the knees and lace up all the way -they are things to be coveted.
    Müller is delighted at the sight of them. He matches their soles against his own clumsy boots and says: "Will you be taking them with you then, Franz?"
    We all three have the same thought; even if he should get better, he would be able to use only one -they are no use to him. But as things are now it is a pity that they should stay here; the orderlies will of course grab them as soon as he is dead,
    "Won't you leave them with us?" Müller repeats.
    Kemmerich doesn't want to. They are his most prized possessions.
    "Well, we could exchange," suggests Müller again. "Out here one can make some use of them." Still Kemmerich is not to be moved.
    I tread on Müller's foot; reluctantly he puts the fine boots back again under the bed.
    We talk a little more and then take our leave.
    "Cheerio, Franz."
    I promise him to come back in the morning. Müller talks of doing so, too. He is thinking of the lace-up boots and means to be on the spot.
    Kemmerich groans. He is feverish. We get hold of an orderly outside and ask him to give Kemmerich a dose of morphia.
    He refuses. "If we were to give morphia to everyone we would have to have tubs full---"
    "You only attend to officers properly," says Kropp viciously.
    I hastily intervene and give him a cigarette. He takes it.
    "Are you usually allowed to give it, then?" I ask him.
    He is annoyed. "If you don't think so, then why do you ask?"
    I press a few more cigarettes into his hand. "Do us the favour---"
    "Well, all right," he says.
    Kropp goes in with him. He doesn't trust him and wants to see.