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 Muller 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 Muller 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 Muller can make good use of them.
Kemmerich will die; it is immaterial who gets them.
Why, then, should Muller not succeed to them? He has more right than a hospital orderly.
When Kemmerich is dead it will be too late.
Therefore Muller 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 recognized 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, Muller, 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. Once, indeed, I became so infuriated that I ran at him blindly and gave him a mighty jab in the stomach and knocked him down.
When he reported me the company commander laughed at him and told him he ought to keep his eyes open; he understood Himmelstoss, and apparently was not displeased at his discomfiture.
I became a past master on the parallel bars and excelled at physical jerks;—we have trembled at the mere sound of his voice, but this runaway post-horse never got the better of us.
One Sunday as Kropp and I were lugging a latrine-bucket on a pole across the barrack-yard, Himmelstoss came by, all polished up and spry for going out. He planted himself in front of us and asked how we liked the job. In spite of ourselves we tripped and emptied the bucket over his legs.
He raved, but the limit had been reached.
"That means clink," he yelled.
But Kropp had had enough.
"There'll be an inquiry first," he said, "and then we'll unload."