This habit of getting used to things is the reason that we seem to forget so quickly.
We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness.
Don’t lose the address,” he said to Bucher. “Be a pity if we lost touch with one another.
We all feed on one another. Such occasional little sparks of kindliness – that’s something one shouldn’t allow to be taken away. It strengthens one for a difficult life.
But our comrades are dead, we cannot help them, they have their rest – and who knows what is waiting for us? We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short.
And at night, waking out of a dream, overwhelmed and bewitched by the crowding apparitions, a man perceives with alarm how slight is the support, how thin the boundary that divides him from the darkness. We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.
We sit as if in our graves waiting only to be closed in.
They are not really thoughts; they are memories that come to torment me in my weakness and put me into a strange mood. Up go.
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 – now, for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger. No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and to be revenged.
To-day we would pass through the scenes of our youth like travellers. We are burnt up by hard facts; like tradesmen we understand distinctions, and like butchers, necessities. We are no longer untroubled – we are indifferent.
Modern trench-warfare demands knowledge and experience; a man must have a feeling for the contours of the ground, an ear for the sound and character of the shells, must be able to decide beforehand where they will drop, how they will burst, and how to shelter from them.
Words, Words, Words – they do not reach me.
They wear grey coats and trousers and boots, but for most of them the uniform is far too big, it hangs on their limbs, their shoulders are too narrow, their bodies too slight; no uniform was ever made to these childish measurements.
We are all curious. “But why did you say you did it? It wasn’t you at all.” He grins. “That doesn’t matter. I have a shooting license.” Then of course, we all understand. Whoever has a shooting license can do just whatever he pleases. “Yes,” he explains. “I got a crack in the head and they presented me with a certificate to say that I was periodically not responsible for my actions. Ever since then I’ve had a grand time. No one dares to annoy me. And nobody does anything to me.
I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.
Still the little piece of convulsed earth in which we lie is held. We have yielded no more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to the enemy. But on every yard there lies a dead man.
There are many such stories, they are mostly far more bitter. All the same, they have nothing to do with mutiny or lead-swinging. They are merely honest and call a thing by its name; for there is a very great deal of fraud, injustice, and baseness in the army.
We are not beaten, for as soldiers we are better and more experienced; we are simply crushed and driven back by overwhelming superior forces.
She let herself drift; the crowd sustained her and did not shock her; she loved it because it was life, unknown, thoughtless, foolish life devoted to the thoughtless and foolish goals which bobbed on its surface like colored buoys on a choppy sea.
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?