ERICH MARIA REMARQUE

All Quiet on the Western Front

Translated from the German by A. W. WHEEN FAWCETT CREST

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death

is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation

of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.

ONE

We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are

full of beef and haricot beans. We are satisfied and at peace. Each man has another mess-tin full

for the evening; and, what is more, there is a double ration of sausage and bread. That puts a man

in fine trim. We have not had such luck as this for a long time. The cook with his carroty head is

begging us to eat; he beckons with his ladle to every one that passes, and spoons him out a great

dollop. He does not see how he can empty his stew-pot in time for coffee. Tjaden and Müller have

produced two washbasins and had them filled up to the brim as a reserve. In Tjaden this is

voracity, in Müller it is foresight. Where Tjaden puts it all is a mystery, for he is and always will be

as thin as a rake. What’s more important still is the issue of a double ration of smokes. Ten cigars,

twenty cigarettes, and two quids of chew per man; now that is decent. I have exchanged my

chewing tobacco with Katczinsky for his cigarettes, which means I have forty altogether. That’s

enough for a day.

It is true we have no right to this windfall. The Prussian is not so generous. We have only a

miscalculation to thank for it.

Fourteen days ago we had to go up and relieve the front line. It was fairly quiet on our sector, so

the quartermaster who remained in the rear had requisitioned the usual quantity of rations and

provided for the full company of one hundred and fifty men. But on the last day an astonishing

number of English heavies opened up on us with high-explosive, drumming ceaselessly on our

position, so that we suffered severely and came back only eighty strong.

Last night we moved back and settled down to get a good sleep for once: Katczinsky is right

when he says it would not be such a bad war if only one could get a little more sleep. In the line

we have had next to none, and fourteen days is a long time at one stretch.

It was noon before the first of us crawled out of our quarters. Half an hour later every man had

his mess-tin and we gathered at the cookhouse, which smelt greasy and nourishing. At the head

of the queue of course were the hungriest–little Albert Kropp, the clearest thinker among us and

therefore only a lance-corporal; Müller, who still carries his school textbooks with him, dreams of

examinations, and during a bombardment mutters propositions in physics; Leer, who wears a full

beard and has a preference for the girls from officers’ brothels. He swears that they are obliged by

an army order to wear silk chemises and to bathe before entertaining guests of the rank of

captain and upwards. And as the fourth, myself, Paul Bäumer. And four are nineteen years of

age, and all four joined up from the same class as volunteers for the war.

Close behind us were our friends: Tjaden, a skinny locksmith of our own age, the biggest eater of

the company. He sits down to eat as thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the

family way; Haie Westhus, of the same age, a peat-digger, who can easily hold a ration-loaf in his

hand and say: Guess what I’ve got in my fist; then Detering, a peasant, who thinks of nothing but

his farm-yard and his wife; and finally Stanislaus Katczinsky, the leader of our group, shrewd,

cunning, and hard-bitten, forty years of age, with a face of the soil, blue eyes, bent shoulders, and

a remarkable nose for dirty weather, good food, and soft jobs.

Our gang formed the head of the queue before the cook-house. We were growing impatient, for

the cook paid no attention to us.

Finally Katczinsky called to him: “Say, Heinrich, open up the soup-kitchen. Anyone can see the

beans are done.”

He shook his head sleepily: “You must all be there first.” Tjaden grinned: “We are all here.”

The sergeant-cook still took no notice. “That may do for you,” he said. “But where are the

others?”

“They won’t be fed by you to-day. They’re either in the dressing-station or pushing up daisies.”

The cook was quite disconcerted as the facts dawned on him. He was staggered. “And I have

cooked for one hundred and fifty men–”

Kropp poked him in the ribs. “Then for once we’ll have enough. Come on, begin!”

Suddenly a vision came over Tjaden. His sharp, mousy features began to shine, his eyes grew

small with cunning, his jaws twitched, and he whispered hoarsely: “Man! then you’ve got bread

for one hundred and fifty men too, eh?”

The sergeant-cook nodded absent-minded, and bewildered.

Tjaden seized him by the tunic. “And sausage?”

Ginger nodded again.

Tjaden’s chaps quivered. “Tobacco too?”

“Yes, everything.”

Tjaden beamed: “What a bean-feast! That’s all for us! Each man gets–wait a bit–yes, practically

two issues.”

Then Ginger stirred himself and said: “That won’t do.”

We got excited and began to crowd around.

“Why won’t that do, you old carrot?” demanded Katczinsky.

“Eighty men can’t have what is meant for a hundred and fifty.”

“We’ll soon show you,” growled Müller.

“I don’t care about the stew, but I can only issue rations for eighty men,” persisted Ginger.

Katczinsky got angry. “You might be generous for once. You haven’t drawn food for eighty men.

You’ve drawn it for the Second Company. Good. Let’s have it then. We are the Second Company.”

We began to jostle the fellow. No one felt kindly toward him, for it was his fault that the food

often came up to us in the line too late and cold. Under shellfire he wouldn’t bring his kitchen up

near enough, so that our soup-carriers had to go much farther than those of the other companies.

Now Bulcke of the First Company is a much better fellow. He is as fat as a hamster in winter, but

he trundles his pots when it comes to that right up to the very front-line.

We were in just the right mood, and there would certainly have been a dust-up if our company

commander had not appeared. He informed himself of the dispute, and only remarked: “Yes, we

did have heavy losses yesterday.”

He glanced into the dixie. “The beans look good.” Ginger nodded. “Cooked with meat and fat.”

The lieutenant looked at us. He knew what we were thinking. And he knew many other things too,

because he came to the company as a non-com, and was promoted from the ranks. He lifted the

lid from the dixie again and sniffed. Then passing on he said: “Bring me a plate full. Serve out all

the rations. We can do with them.”

Ginger looked sheepish as Tjaden danced round him.

“It doesn’t cost you anything! Anyone would think the quartermaster’s store belonged to him!

And now get on with it, you old blubber-sticker, and don’t you miscount either.”

“You be hanged!” spat out Ginger. When things get beyond him he throws up the sponge

altogether; he just goes to pieces. And as if to show that all things were equal to him, of his own

free will he issued in addition half a pound of synthetic honey to each man.

To-day is wonderfully good. The mail has come, and almost every man has a few letters and

papers. We stroll over to the meadow behind the billets. Kropp has the round lid of a margarine

tub under his arm.

On the right side of the meadow a large common latrine has been built, a roofed and durable

construction. But that is for recruits who as yet have not learned how to make the most of

whatever comes their way. We want something better. Scattered about everywhere there are

separate, individual boxes for the same purpose. They are square, neat boxes with wooden sides

all round, and have unimpeachably satisfactory seats. On the sides are hand grips enabling one to

shift them about.

We move three together in a ring and sit down comfortably. And it will be two hours before we

get up again.

I well remembered how embarrassed we were as recruits in barracks when we had to use the

general latrine. There were no doors and twenty men sat side by side as in a railway carriage, so

that they could be reviewed all at one glance, for soldiers must always be under supervision.

Since then we have learned better than to be shy about such trifling immodesties. In time things

far worse than that came easy to us.

Here in the open air though, the business is entirely a pleasure. I no longer understand why we

should always have shied at these things before. They are, in fact, just as natural as eating and

drinking. We might perhaps have paid no particular attention to them had they not figured so

large in our experience, nor been such novelties to our minds–to the old hands they had long

been a mere matter of course.

The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-

quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions, and they give an intimate flavour to

expressions of his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignation. It is impossible to express

oneself in any other way so clearly and pithily. Our families and our teachers will be shocked

when we go home, but here it is the universal language.

Enforced publicity has in our eyes restored the character of complete innocence to all these

things. More than that, they are so much a matter of course that their comfortable performance

is fully as much enjoyed as the playing of a safe top running flush. Not for nothing was the word

“latrine-rumour” invented; these places are the regimental gossip-shops and common-rooms.

We feel ourselves for the time being better off than in any palatial white-tiled “convenience.”

There it can only be hygienic; here it is beautiful.

These are wonderfully care-free hours. Over us is the blue sky. On the horizon float the bright

yellow, sunlit observation-balloons, and the many little white clouds of the anti-aircraft shells.

Often they rise in a sheaf as they follow after an airman. We hear the muffled rumble of the front

only as very distant thunder, bumble-bees droning by quite drown it. Around us stretches the

flowery meadow. The grasses sway their tall spears; the white butterflies flutter around and float

on the soft warm wind of the late summer. We read letters and newspapers and smoke. We take

off our caps and lay them down beside us. The wind plays with our hair; it plays with our words

and thoughts. The three boxes stand in the midst of the glowing, red field-poppies.

We set the lid of the margarine tub on our knees and so have a good table for a game of skat.

Kropp has the cards with him. After every misère ouverte we have a round of nap. One could sit

like this for ever.

The notes of an accordion float across from the billets. Often we lay aside the cards and look

about us. One of us will say: “Well, boys….” Or “It was a near thing that time….” And for a

moment we fall silent. There is in each of us a feeling of constraint. We are all sensible of it; it

needs no words to communicate it. It might easily have happened that we should not be sitting

here on our boxes to-day; it came damn near to that. And so everything is new and brave, red

poppies and good food, cigarettes and summer breeze.

Kropp asks: “Anyone seen Kemmerich lately?”

“He’s up at St. Joseph’s,” I tell him.

Müller explains that he has a flesh wound in his thigh; a good blighty.

We decide to go and see him this afternoon.

Kropp pulls out a letter. “Kantorek sends you all his best wishes.”

We laugh. Müller throws his cigarette away and says: “I wish he was here.”

Kantorek had been our schoolmaster, a stern little man in a grey tailcoat, with a face like a shrew

mouse. He was about the same size as Corporal Himmelstoss, the “terror of Klosterberg.” It is very

queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men. They are so much

more energetic and uncompromising than the big fellows. I have always taken good care to keep

out of sections with small company commanders. They are mostly confounded little martinets.

During drill-time Kantorek gave us long lectures until the whole of our class went, under his

shepherding, to the District Commandant and volunteered. I can see him now, as he used to glare

at us through his spectacles and say in a moving voice: “Won’t you join up, Comrades?”

These teachers always carry their feelings ready in their waistcoat pockets, and trot them out by

the hour. But we didn’t think of that then.

There was, indeed, one of us who hesitated and did not want to fall into line. That was Joseph

Behm, a plump, homely fellow. But he did allow himself to be persuaded, otherwise he would

have been ostracised. And perhaps more of us thought as he did, but no one could very well stand

out, because at that time even one’s parents were ready with the word “coward”; no one had the

vaguest idea what we were in for. The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew

the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see

more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.

Katczinsky said that was a result of their upbringing. It made them stupid. And what Kat said, he

had thought about.

Strange to say, Behm was one of the first to fall. He got hit in the eye during an attack, and we

left him lying for dead. We couldn’t bring him with us, because we had to come back helter-

skelter. In the afternoon suddenly we heard him call, and saw him crawling about in No Man’s

Land. He had only been knocked unconscious. Because he could not see, and was mad with pain,

he failed to keep under cover, and so was shot down before anyone could go and fetch him in.

Naturally we couldn’t blame Kantorek for this. Where would the world be if one brought every

man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were

acting for the best–in a way that cost them nothing.

And that is why they let us down so badly.

For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity,

the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress–to the future. 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 recognise that our generation was more to

be trusted than theirs.

They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our

mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.

While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that

duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But

for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards–they were very free with all these

expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but

also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there

was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it

through.

Before going over to see Kemmerich we pack up his things: he will need them on the way back.

In the dressing station there is great activity: it reeks as ever of carbolic, pus, and sweat. We are

accustomed to a good deal in the billets, but this makes us feel faint. We ask for Kemmerich. He

lies in a large room and receives us with feeble expressions of joy and helpless agitation. While he

was unconscious someone had stolen his watch.

Müller shakes his head: “I always told you that nobody should carry as good a watch as that.”

Müller is rather crude and tactless, otherwise he would hold his tongue, for anybody can see

that Kemmerich will never come out of this place again. Whether he finds his watch or not will

make no difference, at the most one will only be able to send it to his people.

“How goes it, Franz?” asks Kropp.

Kemmerich’s head sinks.

“Not so bad… but I have such a damned pain in my foot.”

We look at his bed covering. His leg lies under a wire basket. The 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. We wait outside.

Müller returns to the subject of the boots. “They would fit me perfectly. In these boots I get

blister after blister. Do you think he will last till tomorrow after drill? If he passes out in the night,

we know where the boots–”

Kropp returns. “Do you think–?” he asks.

“Done for,” says Müller emphatically.

We go back to the huts. I think of the letter that I must write tomorrow to Kemmerich’s mother.

I am freezing. I could do with a tot of rum. Müller pulls up some grass and chews it. Suddenly little

Kropp throws his cigarette away, stamps on it savagely, and looking around him with a broken

and distracted face, stammers “Damned shit, the damned shit!”

We walk on for a long time. Kropp has calmed himself; we understand, he saw red; out here

every man gets like that sometime.

“What has Kantorek written to you?” Müller asks him.

He laughs. “We are the Iron Youth.”

We all three smile bitterly. Kropp rails: he is glad that he can speak.

Yes, that’s the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth. Youth! We are

none of us more than twenty years old. But young? Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk.

TWO

It is strange to think that at home in the drawer of my writing table there lies the beginning of a

play called “Saul” and a bundle of poems. Many an evening I have worked over them–we all did

something of the kind–but that has become so unreal to me I cannot comprehend it any more.

Our early life is cut off from the moment we came here, and that without our lifting a hand. We

often try to look back on it and to find an explanation, but never quite succeed. For us young men

of twenty everything is extraordinarily vague, for Kropp, Müller, Leer, and for me, for all of us

whom Kantorek calls the “Iron Youth.” All the older men are linked up with their previous life.

They have wives, children, occupations, and interests, they have a background which is so strong

that the war cannot obliterate it. We young men of twenty, however, have only our parents, and

some, perhaps, a girl–that is not much, for at our age the influence of parents is at its weakest

and girls have not yet got a hold over us. Besides this there was little else–some enthusiasm, a

few hobbies, and our school. Beyond this our life did not extend. And of this nothing remains.

Kantorek would say that we stood on the threshold of life. And so it would seem. We had as yet

taken no root. The war swept us away. For the others, the older men, it is but an interruption.

They are able to think beyond it. We, however, have been gripped by it and do not know what the

end may be. We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a waste

land. All the same, we are not often sad.

Though Müller would be delighted to have Kemmerich’s boots, he is really quite as sympathetic as

another who could not bear to think of such a thing for grief. He merely sees things clearly. Were

Kemmerich able to make any use of the boots, then Müller would rather go bare-foot over barbed

wire than scheme how to get hold of them. But as it is the boots are quite inappropriate to

Kemmerich’s circumstances, whereas Müller can make good use of them. Kemmerich will die; it is

immaterial who gets them. Why, then, should Müller not succeed to them? He has more right

than a hospital orderly. When Kemmerich is dead it will be too late. Therefore Müller is already on

the watch.

We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real

and important for us. And good boots are scarce.

Once it was different. When we went to the district-commandant to enlist, we were a class of

twenty young men, many of whom proudly shaved for the first time before going to the barracks.

We had no definite plans for our future. Our thoughts of a career and occupation were as yet of

too unpractical a character to furnish any scheme of life. We were still crammed full of vague

ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character. We were

trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years

at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer. At

first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent, we recognised that what matters is not

the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill. We became

soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us.

After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have

more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole gamut of

culture from Plato to Goethe. With our young, awakened eyes we saw that the classical

conception of the Fatherland held by our teachers resolved itself here into a renunciation of

personality such as one would not ask of the meanest servants–salutes, springing to attention,

parade-marches, presenting arms, right wheel, left wheel, clicking the heels, insults, and a

thousand pettifogging details. We had fancied our task would be different, only to find we were

to be trained for heroism as though we were circus-ponies. But we soon accustomed ourselves to

it. We learned in fact that some of these things were necessary, but the rest merely show.

Soldiers have a fine nose for such distinctions.

By threes and fours our class was scattered over the platoons amongst Frisian fishermen,

peasants, and labourers with whom we soon made friends. Kropp, Müller, Kemmerich, and I went

to No .9 platoon under Corporal Himmelstoss.

He had the reputation of being the strictest disciplinarian in the camp, and was proud of it. He

was a small undersized fellow with a foxy, waxed moustache, who had seen twelve years’ service

and was in civil life a postman. He had a special dislike of Kropp, Tjaden, Westhus, and me,

because he sensed a quiet defiance.

I have remade his bed fourteen times in one morning. Each time he had some fault to find and

pulled it to pieces. I have kneaded a pair of prehistoric boots that were as hard as iron for twenty

hours–with intervals of course–until they became as soft as butter and not even Himmelstoss

could find anything more to do to them; under his orders I have scrubbed out the Corporals’ Mess

with a tooth-brush. Kropp and I were given the job of clearing the barrack-square of snow with a

hand-broom and a dust-pan, and we would have gone on till we were frozen had not a lieutenant

accidentally appeared who sent us off, and hauled Himmelstoss over the coals. But the only result

of this was to make Himmelstoss hate us more. For six weeks consecutively I did guard every

Sunday and was hut-orderly for the same length of time. With full pack and rifle I have had to

practise on a wet, soft, newly-ploughed field the “Prepare to advance, advance!” and the “Lie

down!” until I was one lump of mud and finally collapsed. Four hours later I had to report to

Himmelstoss with my clothes scrubbed clean, my hands chafed and bleeding. Together with

Kropp, Westhus, and Tjaden I have stood at attention in a hard frost without gloves for a quarter

of an hour at a stretch, while Himmelstoss watched for the slightest movement of our bare fingers

on the steel barrel of the rifle. I have run eight times from the top floor of the barracks down to

the courtyard in my shirt at two o’clock in the morning because my drawers projected three

inches beyond the edge of the stool on which one had to stack all one’s things. Alongside me ran

the corporal, Himmelstoss, and trod on my bare toes. At bayonet-practice I had constantly to fight

with Himmelstoss, I with a heavy iron weapon, whilst he had a handy wooden one with which he

easily struck my arms till they were black and blue. …

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•

..
ERNST JUNGER

Storm of Steel

Translated with an Introduction by
MICHAEL H OFMANN

PENGUIN BOOK S

•

I
I

I

•

PEN GU IN @ C LA SS I CS
ST O RM OF STEEL

ERNST lONGER was born in H eidel berg in 1895. H e ran awa y
from schoo l to enl ist in the Fore ign Legion and in 1914 volun-
teered to join the Ge rma n army. He fought throughout the war
and recorded his experiences in seve ra l books, most famous ly in
In StIlhlgewittern (Stonn of Steel), While admi red by the Nazis,
he remained critica l of them and through novels such as On the
Marble Cliffs (1939) sought to understand the impasse into
which Germa ny was heading. Throu ghout the Nazi per iod he
was a controversial “inner emigrant, ” distanced from the regime
yet only obliquely in opposition. H is most famous late r books
include Heliopolis (1949), The Glass Bees (1957), Eumeswil
(1977), Aladdin’s Problem (1983) , and A Dangerous Encounter
(1985). He died in 1998.

MICHA£L H OF MA NN has translated joseph Roth, Hena Mu ller,
ZOe j e nn y, Wim Wenden, Wolfgang Koeppen, and Fra nz Kafka.
His own books include Corona, Corona and Behind the Lines.
He also coedited, with j ames Ladun, After Ovid .

•

STORM OF STEEL

pouring water or coffee from a canteen into a snoring sleeper’s
mouth.

On the evening of 22. April, we marched out of Preny and
covered over twenty miles to the village of Hattonchatel, without
registering any footsoreness, in spite of ou’r heavy packs. We
pitched camp in the woods on the right of the fam ous Grande
Tranchee. All the indications were that we would be fighting in
the morning. Bandage packs were issued, extra tins of beef, and
signalling flags for the gunners.

I sat up for a long tim e that night, in the foreboding eve of
battle mood of which soldiers at all times have left report, on a
nee stump clustered round with blue anemones, before I crept
over the ranks of my comrades to my tent. I had tangled dreams,
in which a principal role was played by a skull.

In the morning, when I told Priepke about it, he said he hoped
it was a French skull.

. , .

• • • ”

Les Eparges

The tender green of young leaves shimmered in the flat light. We
followed hidden, twisting paths towards a narrow gorge behind
the front line. We had been told that the 76th was to attack after
a bombardment of only twenty minutes, and that we were to be
held in reserve. On the dot of noon, our artillery launched into a
furious bombardment that echoed and re-ec hoed through the
wooded hollows. For the first time, we heard what was meant by
the expression ‘drumfire’. We sat perched on our haversacks,
idle and excited. A runner plunged through to the company
commander. Brisk exchange. ‘The three nearest trenches have
fallen to us, and six field guns have been captured!’ Loud cheers
rang out. A feeling of up-and-at-’em.

At last, the longed-for order.ln a long line, we moved forward,
towards the pattering of heavy rifle fire. It was getting se rious .
To the side of the forest path, dull thumps came down in a clump
of firs, bringing down a rain of branches and soil. One nervous
soldier threw himself to the ground, while his comrades laughed
uneasily. Then Death’s call slipped through the ranks: ‘ Ambu-
lancemen co the Front! ‘

A little later, we passed the spot that had been hit. The casual-
ties had already been rem oved. Bloody scraps of doth and flesh
had been left on bushes around the crater – a strange and dreadful
sight that put me in mind of the butcher-bird that spikes its prey
on thorn bushes.

‘3

•

STORM OF STEE L

Troops were advanci ng at the double along the Grande
Tranchee. Casualties huddled by the roadside, whimpering for
water, prisoners carrying stretchers came panting back, limbers
clattered through fire at a ga llop. On either side, shells spattered
the soft ground, heavy boughs came crashing down. A dead horse
lay across the middle of the path, with giant wounds, its steaming
entrails beside it. [n among the great, bloody scenes there was a
wild, unsuspected hilarity. A.bearded reservist leaned against a
tree: ‘On you go now, boys, Frenc hie’s on the run!’

We entered the battle-tramped realm of the infantryman. The
area round the jumping-off position had been deforested by
shells. In the ripped-up no man’s land lay the victims of the
attack, still facing the enemy; their grey tunics barely stood out
from the ground. A gia nt form with red, blood-spattered beard
stared fixedly at the sky, his fingers clutching the spongy ground.
A young man tossed in a shell-crater, his features a lready yellow
with his impending death. He seemed not to want to be looked
at; he gave us a cross shrug and pulled his coat over his head, and
lay still.

Our marching column broke up. Shells came continually hiss-
ing towards us in long, flat arcs, lightnings whirled up the forest
floor. The shrill toot offield artillery shells I had heard quite often
even before Orainville; it didn’t strike me as being particularly
dangerous. The loose order in which our company now adva nced
over the broken field had something oddly calming about it; I
thought privately that this baptism of fire busi ness was actually
far less dangerous than I’d expected. In a curious failure of
comprehension, I looked alertly about me for possible targets for
a ll this artillery fire, not, apparently, realizing that it was actually
ourselves that the enemy gunners were trying for all th ey were
worth to hit.

‘Ambulancemen !’ We had our first fatality. A shrapnel ball had
ripped through rifleman Stolter’s carotid artery. Three packets of
lint were sodden with blood in no time. In a matter of seconds

LES EPARGES

he had bled to death. Next to us, a couple of ordn ance .pieces
loosed off shells, drawing more fire down on us from the enemy.
An artillery lieurenant, who was in the vanguard, looking for
wounded, was thrown to the ground by a colu!llfl of steam that
spurted in front of him. He got to his feet and made his way back
with notable calm. We took him in with gleaming eyes.

It was getting dark when we received orders to advance further.
The way now led through dense undergrowth shot through by
shells, into an endless communication trench along which the
French had dropped their packs as they ran. Approaching the
village of Les Eparges, without having any troops in front of us,
we were forced to hew defensive positions in solid rock. Finally,
I slumped into a bush and fell asleep. At moments, half asleep, I
was aware of artillery shells, ours or theirs, describing thei r
ellipses in a trail of sparks.

‘Come on, man, get up! We’re mov ing ouel’ I woke up in
dew-sodden grass. Through a stuttering swathe of machine-gun
fire, we plunged back inca our communication trench, and moved
to a position on the edge of the wood pre vio usly held by the
French. A sweetish smell and a bundle hanging in the wire caught
my attention. In the rising mist, I leaped out of the trench and
found a shrunken French corpse. Flesh like mouldering fish
gleamed greenishly through spli tS in the shredded uniform. Turn-
ing round, I took a step back in horror: next to me a figu re was
crouched against a tree. It still had glea ming French leather
harness, and on its back was a fully packed haversack, topped’
by a round mess-tin. Empty eye-sockets and a few strands of hair
on the bluish-black skull indicated that the man was nOt among
the living. There was another sitting down, slumped forward
towards his feet, as though he had just collapsed. All around
were dozens more, roned, dried, stiffened to mummies, frozen in
an eerie dance of death. The French must have spent months in
the proximity of their fallen comrades, without burying them.

During the morning, the sun gradually pierced the fog, and

STORM OF STEEL

spread “a pleasant warmth. After I’d slept on the bottom of the
trench for a while, curiosity impelled me to inspect the unoccu-
pied trench we’d captured the day before. It was littered with
great piles of provisions, ammunition, equipment, weapons, let-
ters and newspapers. The dugouts were like looted junk-~hops.
In amongst it all were the bodies of the brave defenders, their
guns still poking out through the shooting-slits. A headless torso
was jammed in some shot-up beams. Head and neck were gone,
white cartilage gleamed out of reddish- black flesh. I found it
difficult to fathom. Next to it a very young man la y on his back
with glassy eyes and fists still aiming. A peculiar feeling, looking
into dead, questioning eyes – a shudd er that I never quite lost in
the course of the war. His pockets had been turned inside ou t,
and his emptied wallet lay beside him.

Unmolested by any fire, I st ro lled along the ravaged trench. It
was the short mid-morning lull that was often to be my only
moment of respite on the battlefield. I used it to take a good
look at everything. The unfamiliar weapons, the darkness of the
dugouts, the colourful contents of the haversacks, it was all new
and strange to me. I pocketed some French ammunition, undid a
silky-soft tarpaulin and picked up a cam een wr apped in blue
cloth, only to chuck it all away again a few steps further along.
The sight of a beautiful striped shirt,lying next to a ripped-ope n
officer’s va li se, sed uced me to strip off my uniform a nd get into
some fresh linen. I relished the pleasant ti ckJe of clean cloth
against my skin.

Thus kitted out, I looked for a sunny spOt in the trench, sat
down on a beam-end, and with my bayonet opened a round can
of meat for my breakfast. Then Ilit my pipe, an d browsed through
some of the many French magazines that lay scattered about,
some of them, as I saw from the dates, only sent to the trenches
on the eve o f Verdun.

Not without a certain shudder, I remember that during my
breakfast I tried to unscrew a curio us little contraption that I

LES EPARGES

found lying at my feet in the trench, which for some reason I took
to be a ‘storm lantern’. It wasn’t unti l a lot later that it dawned
on me that the thing I’d been fidd ling around with was a live
hand-grenade.

As conditions grew brighter, a German battery opened up from
a stretch of woods just behind the trench. It didn ‘t take long for
the enemy to reply. Suddenly I was stru ck by a mighty crash
behind me, and saw a steep pillar of smoke ri sing. Still unfamiliar
with the so unds of war, I was not able to distinguish the hisses
and whistles and bangs of our own gunnery from the ripping’
crash of enemy shells, and hence, to get a se nse of the lines of
engagement. Above all, I could not account for the way I seemed
to be under fire hom a U sides, so that the trajectories of the
various shells were criss-crossing apparently aim lessly over the
little warren of trenches where a few of us were holed up. This
effect, for which I could see no cause, disquieted me and made
me think. I still viewed the machinery of conflict with the eyes of
an inexperienced recru it – the expressions of bellicosity seemed
as distant and peculiar to me as events on another planet. This
meant “I was unafraid; feeling myself to be invisible, I couldn’t
believe I was a target to anyone, mu ch less that I might be hit.
So, retu rned to my unit,I surveyed the terrain in front of me with
great indifference. In my pocket-diary I wrote do wn – a habit
of mine later on as well – the times and the intensity of the
bombardment.

Towards noon, the artillery fire had increased to a kind of
savage pounding dance. The flames lit around us incessa ntly.
Black, white and yellow clouds mingled. The shells with black
smo ke, which the old-timers called ‘Americans’ or ‘coal boxes’,
ripped with incredible vio lence. And all the time the curious,
ca nary-like twittering of dozens of fuses. With their cut-out
shapes, in which the trapped air produced a flute-like trill, they
drifted over the lo ng su rf of explosions like ticking copper toy
clocks or mechanical insects. The odd thing was that the little

STORM OF STEEL .

birds in the fore st seemed quite untro ubled by the myriad noise;
they sa t peaceably over the smoke in th eir battered boughs. In
the sho rt intervals o f firing, we could hear them singing happily
or ardently to one a nother, if anything even inspired o r encour·
aged by the dreadful noise on all sides.

In the moments when the shelling was particularly heavy, the
men called to each other to remain vigilant. In th e stretch of
trench that I could see, and out o f wh ose walls great dumps of
mud had already been knocked here and there, we were in com~
plete readiness. Ou r rifles were unlocked in t he shoo ting-slits,
and the riflemen were alertly eyeing the foreground. From time
to time they checked to left and right to see whether we were still
in contact, and they smiled when their eyes encountered th ose of
co mrad es.

I sat with a comrade on a bench cut into the da y wall of the
trench. Once, the bo ard of the shooting-slit th ro ugh which we
were loo king splintered, and a rifle bullet flew between our heads
and buried itself in th e day.

By and by, there were casualties. I had no way of knowing
how th ings stood in other sectors of the labyrinthine trench, but
the increasing frequ ency of the calls for ‘ Ambulancemen!’ showed
that the shelling was starting to take effect. From time to time, a
figure hurried by with its head or neck or hand wrapped in fre sh,
clean and very visi ble bandages, on its way to the rea r. It was a
matter of urgency to get the victim out of the way, because of th e
military superstition by which a trifling wound or hit, if nOt
immed iately dealt with, is certain to be followed by so methi ng
rather worse.

M y comrade, volunteer Kohl, kept up that North German
sang-froid that mi ght have been made for such a situation. H e
was chewing and sq ueezing on a cigar that refused to draw, and
apart from that looked rather sleepy. Nor did he allow himself
to be upset when, suddenly, to the rea r of us, there was a clattering
as of a thousa nd rifles. It turned out th at the intensity of the

,8

LES EPARGE5

shelling had caused the wood to catch fire. Great tongues of flam e
climbed noisily up the tree trunks.

While all this was going o n, I suffered from a rather curi ous
anxiety. I was envi ous of th e old ‘Lions of Perthes’ for thei r
experience in the ‘witches’ ca uldron’, which 1 had missed out on
through being away in Recouvrence. Theref?re, each time the
coal-boxes came down especially thick and fast i!1 o ur neck of
things, I wou ld turn to Kohl, who had been th ere, and ask:

‘H ey, would you say this was like Perthes now?’
To my chagrin, he would reply each time with a casuall y

dismissive gesture:
‘Not by a long cha lk! ‘
When the shelling had intensified to the extent that now our

day bench had started to sway with the impact of the black
monsters, I yelled into his ea r:

‘ He y, is it like Perthes now?’
Kohl was a conscientio us soldier. He began by standing up,

looked about himself carefully, and then roared back, to my
satisfaction:

‘ I th ink it’s getting there!’
The reply fi lled me with foo lish delight, as it co nfirmed to me

tha t this was my fi rst proper battle.
At that instant, a man popped up in the corner of our sector:

‘Follow me left!’ We passed on the command, and started a long
the smoke-filled position. The ration party had just arrived wi th
th e chow, and hu ndreds of unwa nted mess-tins sat and steamed
on the breastwor k. Who could think to ea t now? A crowd of
wounded men pushed past us with blood-soaked bandages, t he
excitement of the battle still etched on their pale faces. Up on the
edge of the trench, stretcher after stretcher was swiftl y lugged to
the rear. The sense of being up against it began to take hold of
us. ‘Careful of my arm, mate!’ ‘Come along, man, keep up!’

I spotted Lieutenant Sandvoss, ru shi ng past th e trench with
distracted staring eyes. A long white bandage tr ailing round his

19

STORM OF STEEL

neck gave him a strangely ungainly appearance, which probably
explains why just at that moment he reminded me of a duck.
There was something dreamlike about the vision – terror in the
guise of the absurd. Straight afterwards, we hurried past Colonel
von Oppen, who had his hand in his turnc pocket and was issuing
orders to his adjutant. ‘Aha, so there is some organization and
purpose behind all this,’ it flashed through my brain.

The trench debouched into a stretch of wood. We stood irresol-
utely under huge beech trees. A lieutenant emerged from dense
undergrowth andcalled to our longest-serving NCO: ‘Have them
fall out towards the sunset, and then take up position. Report to
me in the dugout by the clearing.’ Swearing, the NCO took over.

We fell out in extended order, and lay down expectantly in a
series of flattish depressions that some predecessors of ours had
scooped out of the ground. Our ribald conversations were sud-
denly cut off by a marrow-freezing cry. Twenty yard? behind us,
clumps of earth whirled up out of a white cloud and smacked
into the boughs. The crash echoed through the woods. Stricken
eyes looked at each other, bodies pressed themselves inro the
ground with a humbling se nsation of powerlessoess to do any-
thing else. Explosion followed explosio n. Choking gases drifted
through the undergr owth, smoke obscured the treetops, trees
and branches came crashing to the ground, screams. We leaped
up and ran blindly, chased by lightnings and crushing air pressure,
from {ree to tree, looking for cover, skirting around giant tree
trunks like frightened game. A dugout where many men had
taken shelter, and which I too was running towards, too k a direct
hit that ripped up the planking and sent heavy timbers spinning
through the air.

Like a couple of squirrels having stones thrown at them, the
NCO and I dodged panting round a huge beech. Quite mechan-
ically, and spur red on by further explosions, I ran after my
superior, who sometimes turned round and stared at me, wild-
eyed, yelling: ‘What in God’s name are those things ? What are

,0

LES EPARGES

they?’ Suddenly there was a fla sh among the rootwork, and a
blow on the left thigh flung me to the ground. I thought I had
been struck by a clump of earth, but the warm trickle of blood
indicated that I’d been wounded. Later, I saw that a needle-sharp
piece of shrapnel had given me a flesh wound, though my wallet
had taken the brunt of it. The fine cut, which before slicing into
the muscle had split no fewer than nine thicknesses of stout
leather, looked as though it might have been administered by
a scalpel. •

I threw down my haversack and ran towards the trench we
had come from. From all sides, wounded men were making tracks
towards it from the shelled woods. The trench was appalling,
choked with seriously wounded and dying men. A figure stripped
to the waist, with ripped-open back, leaned against the parapet.
Another, with a triangular flap hanging off the back of his skull,
emitted sho rt, high-pitched screams. This was the home of the
great god Pain, and for the first time I looked through a devilish
chink into the depths of his realm. And fresh shells came down
all the time.

I lost my head completely. Ruthlessly, I barged past everyone
on my path, before finally, having fallen back a few times in my
haste, climbing out of the hellish crush of the trench, to move
more freel y above. Like a bolting horse, I ru shed through dense
undergrowth, across paths and clearings, till I co llapsed in a
copse by the Grande Tranchee.

It was already growing dark by the time a couple of stretcher-
bearers who were looking for casualties came upon me. They
picked me up on their stretcher and carried me back to their
dressing-station in a dugout covered over with tree branches,
where I spent the night, pressed together with many other
wounded men. An exhausted medic stood in the throng of groan-
ing men, bandagi ng, injecting and giving calm instructions. I
pulled a dead man’s coat over me, and fell into a sleep that
incipient fever lit with lurid dreams. Once, in the middle of the

STORM Of STEEL

night, I awoke, and saw the doctor sti1l working by the light of a
lamp. A Frenchman was screaming incessantly, and next to me a
man growled: ‘Bloody Frenchies, never happy if they’ve not got
something to moan about!’ And then I was asleep again.

As I was being carried away the following morning, a splinrer
bored a hole through the stretcher canvas between my knees. ‘

Al ong with othet wounded men, I was loaded on to one of the
ambulance wagons that shuttled between the battlefield and the
main dressing~station. We galloped across the Grande Tranchee,
which was still under heavy fire. Behind the grey canvas walls we
careered through the danger that accompanie9 us with giant
stamping strides.

On one of the stretchers o n which -like loaves of bread into
an oven – we had been pushed into the back of the cart lay a
comrade with a shot in the belly that occasioned him intense
pain. He appea led to everyone of us to finish him off with
the ambulanceman’s pistol that hung in the wagon. No one
answered. I was yet to experience the feeling where every jolt
seems like a hammet blow on a bad injury.

The chief dressing~station was in a forest clearing. Long rows
of straw had been laid out and covered with foliage. The stream
o f wounded was proof, if proof were needed, that a significant
engagemenr was in progress. At the sight o f the surgeon, who
stood checking the roster in the bloody chaos, lance again had
the impression, hard to describe, of seeing a man surrounded by
elemental terror and anguish, studying the functioning of his
organization with ant~like cold~bloodedness.

Supplied with food and drink, and smoking a cigarette, Ilay
in the middle of a long line of wounded men on my spill of straw,
in that mood which sets in when a test has been got through, if
not exactly with flying colou rs; then still one way or another. A
short snatch o f conversation next to me gave me pause.

‘ What hapP;tned to you, co mrade ?’ ,
‘I’ve been shot in the bladder.’

32

LE S EPA RGE S

‘ Is it very bad? ‘
‘Oh, that’s nOt the problem. I can’t stand it that I can’t fight … ‘
Later th at same morning, we were taken to the main collection

point in the village church at St Maurice. A hospital train was
there, already ge tting up steam. We would be back in ,Germany
in two days. From my bed on the train, I could see th e fields just
co ming into spring. We were well loo ked after by a qu iet fellow,
a philosophy sc holar in private life. The first thing he did for me
was to take out his penknife and cut th e boot off my foot. Th ecli
are people wh o have a gift fot tending others, and so it was with
this man; even seeing him re ading a book by ‘a night~ light made
me feel better.

The tra in took us to H eidelberg.
At th e sight of the Neckar slopes wreathed with flowering

cherry trees, I had a strong sense of having co me home. What a
beautiful country it was, and eminently wonh our blood and our
lives. Never before had I felt its charm so clearly. I had good and
serious th oughts, and fo r the first time I sensed that this war was
more than just a great adventure.

The battle at Les Eparges was my fir st. It was quite unlike wh at
I had expected. I had taken part in a ma jor engagement, without
having clapped eyes on a single live opponent. It wasn’t until
much later that I experi enced the direct co ming together, the
climax of battle in the fo rm of waves of attackers o n an open
field, which, for decisive, murd erous moments, would break into
the chaos and vacui ty of the battlefield.

II

STORM OF STEEL

his respects to neighbouring monarchs (with many libations co
Bacchus), in readiness for tbe evening ahead. These visits he
referred to as <ambuscades’. On one occasion, he got into a tiff
with the King of Inchy, and had a mounted MP call outan official
feud between them. After several engagements, in the course of
which rival detachments of squires bombarded each other with
clods of earth from their respective fortified trenches, the King of ,
lnchy was incautious enough to regale himself with Bavarian
beer at the mess in Queant, and was apprehended while visiting
a lonely place. He was forced to purchase a vast tun of beer by
way of ransom. And so ended the epic war between the two
monarchs.

On II December, I went over the top to the front line, to report
to Lieutenant Werje, the commander of my new company, which
occupied C Sector in turn about with my former company, the
6th. As I was about {Q leap into the trench, I was shocked at the
change to the position in just a fortnight. It had collapsed into
a huge, mud-filled pit in which the occupants sloshed around
miserably. Already up to my hip in it, I thought ruefully back to
the round table of the King of Queant. We poor grunts! Almost
all the dugouts had collapsed, and the shelters were inundated.
We had to spend the next weeks working incessantly, merely to
get something resembling terra {irma underfoot. For the time
being, I stayed with Lieutenants Werje and Boje in a shelter,
whose ceiling – in spite of tarpaulins suspended beneath it –
leaked like a sieve, so that the servants had to carry the water out
in buckets every half-h our.

When I left the shelter completely sodden the following morn-
ing, I couI4n'( believe the sight that met my eyes. The battlefield
that previously had borne the stamp of deathly emptiness upon
it was now as animated as a fairground. The occupants of both
trenches had emerged from the mora ss of their trenches ‘on co
the top. and already a lively exchange of schnapps, cigarettes,
uniform buttons and other items had commenced between the

,6

DAILY LIFE IN THE TRENCHES

two barbed-wire lines. The throng of khaki-dad figures emerging
from the hitherto so apparently deserted English lines seemed as
eerie as the appearance of a ghost in daylight.

Suddenly a shot rang out that laid one of our men dead in
the mire, whereupon both sides quickly scuttled back into their
trench es. I went to that part of our line which fronted on to the
British sap, and called out that I wanted to speak to an officer.
And la, I saw several British soldiers going back, and returning
with a young man from their firing trench who had on, as I was
able to see through my field glasses, a somewhat more o rnate cap
than they did. We negotiated first in English, and then a little
more fluently in French, with all the men listening. I reproached
him for the fact thar one of our men had been killed by a
treacherous sho t, to which he replied that that hadn’t been his
company, but the one adjacent. ‘ II y a des cochons aussi chez
vous!”· he remarked when a few shots from the sector next to
ours plugged into the ground not far from his head, causing me
to get ready to take cover. We did, though, say much to one
another that betokened an almost sportsmanlike admiration
for the other, and I’m sure we should have liked to exchange
mementoes.

For clarity’S sa ke, we gave a solemn mutual declaration of
war, to commence three minutes after the end of our talks, and
following a ‘Good-night!’ on his part, and an ‘ Au revoir! ‘ on
mine, to the regret of my men I fired off a shot that pinged against
his steel loophole, and got one myself that almost knocked the
rifle out of my hands.

It was the first time I had been given an opportunity of survey-
ing the battlefield in fro!?t of the sap, seeing as otherwise one
couldn’t even show the peak of one’s cap in such a perilous place.
I saw that immediately in front of our entanglements there was
a skeleton whose bleached bones glimmered out of scra ps of blue

.. ‘There are some unscrupulous bastards’ on your side 100!’

‘7

STORM Of STEEL

uniform. From the British cap-badges see n that day, we were
able to tell that the regiment facing ours were the ‘Hindustani’
Leicestershires.

Shortly after our negotiations were concluded, our artillery
fired off a few rounds at the enemy positions, whereupon, before
our eyes, four stretchers were carried across the open field without
a single shot being loosed off at them from our side. I must say I
felt proud.

Throughout the war, it was always my endeavour to view my
opponent without animus, and to form an opinion of him as a
man oq. the basis of the courage he showed. I would always try
and seek him o ut in combat and kill him, and I expected nothing
else from him. But never did I entertain mean thoughts of him.
When prisoners fell into my hands, later on, I felt responsible
for their safety, and would always do everything in my power
for them.

As Christmas …