There is nothing he likes more than just hearing about it. I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?
We have to take things as lightly as we can, so we make the most of every opportunity, and nonsense stands stark and immediate beside horror. It cannot be otherwise, that is how we hearten ourselves.
It was not any recognition of their beauty and their significance that attracted us, but the communion, the feeling of a comradeship with the things and events of our existence, which cut us off and made the world of our parents a thing incomprehensible to us – for then we surrendered ourselves to events and were lost in them, and the least little thing was enough to carry us down the stream of eternity.
Kat looks around and whispers: “Shouldn’t we just take a revolver and put an end to it?” The youngster will hardly survive the carrying, and at the most he will only last a few days. What he has gone through so far is nothing to what he’s in for till he dies. Now he is numb and feels nothing. In an hour he will become one screaming bundle of intolerable pain. Every day that he can live will be a howling torture. And to whom does it matter whether he has them or not – – I nod.
He had collapsed like a rotten tree.
They are many indeed that lie there, though until now we have not thought of it so. Hitherto we have just all remained there together, they in the graves, we in the trenches, divided only by a few handfuls of earth. They were but a little before us; daily we became less and they more, and often we have not known whether we already belonged to them or not.
We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down –.
Then what exactly is the war for?” asks Tjaden. Kat shrugs his shoulders. “There must be some people to whom the war is useful.” “Well, I’m not one of them,” grins Tjaden. “Not you, nor anybody else here.
I implore them with my eyes: Speak to me – take me up – take me, Life of my Youth – you who are care-free, beautiful – receive me again – I wait, I wait. Images float through my mind, but they do not grip me, they are mere shadows and memories. Nothing – nothing –.
Parting from my friend Albert Kropp was very hard. But a man gets used to that sort of thing in the army.
It is strange to see these enemies of ours so close up. They have faces that make one think – honest peasant faces, broad foreheads, broad noses, broad mouths, broad hands, and thick hair. They ought to be put to threshing, reaping, and apple picking. They look just as kindly as our own peasants in Friesland.
It is when one is alone that one begins to observe Nature and to love her.
At last Ferdinand Kosole waltzes off with one, a husky wench with massive breastworks that should afford his gun a good lie. Now all the others are following his lead.
It’s queer, when one thinks about it,” goes on Kropp, “we are here to protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect their fatherland. Now who’s in the right?
Our first experience of heavy artillery fire showed us our mistake, and the view of life that their teaching had given us fell to pieces under that bombardment.
The fellows who write those lies ought to go out and hang themselves.
Even a soldier’s behind likes to sit soft.
The noises from outside all merge into one another, become a dream which disappears from the waking memory... he sees the woods and stars behind him, and so he moves on, an ordinary soldier, with his big boots and his webbing and his pack, making his tiny way under the sky’s great vault along the road that lies before him; a soldier who forgets things quickly and who isn’t even depressed much any more, but who just goes onwards under the great night sky.
There is the great sky again, and the stars, and the first streak of dawn, and he is walking beneath that sky, a soldier with big boots and a full belly, a little soldier in the early morning.
Die Worte wehten im Zwielicht hin und her, sie waren ohne Bedeutung, und das, was von Bedeutung war, war ohne Worte.