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kind of literature Paul and his companions would have been familiar

with before they were plunged into the war.

The presence of the horses also helps set the time of this novel.

Horses and donkeys were used extensively in the First World War, since

trucks, tanks, and planes were still in the early stages of

development. That's also why Paul calls trucks motor lorries, to

distinguish them from horse-drawn wagons, which were still sometimes

called, in English, trucks or lorries.

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As readers, we almost sigh with relief when the troops trudge back

at three in the morning toward the place where the trucks will pick

them up. They make their way through trenches and a small forest,

and into a cemetery, but Kat, whose feelings are always accurate at

the front, is uneasy. He's right: another bombardment begins. This

time Paul receives a blow on the head and is struck by flying

splinters, but he is not seriously wounded. Ironically, it is a coffin

that shelters him; the arm he feels is that of a long-dead corpse, not

a fellow soldier.

Bells and metal clappers warn of a new danger, poison gas. Paul

and Kat don their gas masks in time, but some of the new recruits do

not. They will cough out their seared lungs in clots. History tells us

that gas victim died in great pain, their faces burnt and blackened.

Tensely waiting to see if their masks are functioning, Kat and Paul

and Kropp scowl at the obscene stuff, the gas hanging like a jellyfish

over the field. A new bombardment churns up the cemetery, as if

killing the dead a second time. When the explosions ease, Paul and

Kat- heads buzzing from the stale air circulating through their masks-

dig a man out from under a coffin, dumping the corpse to make the work

go better. They bandage their comrade, using a coffin board. They also

bandage the rookie that Paul comforted earlier. His hip is shattered

and they think of shooting him as an act of kindness, but too many men

gather. War may be war, but it's still not right to shoot a man in

cold blood. Two dead men lie in an upturned grave; the living throw

more dirt over them. The earth may sometimes protect a man, but as

Paul will comment later on, she also erases all sign of his ever

having existed.

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NOTE: THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE Earlier in this chapter Paul

thought of the screaming of the horses as nature crying out in protest

at what man was doing. If you keep an eye out for other comments on

nature as the story develops, you'll notice that he never does this

again. Instead, his references to nature show that earth simply covers

the dead and erases their identities. It's like the poem "Grass" by

American poet Carl Sandburg. Nature just doesn't care one way or

another, but goes calmly on. Grass covers all signs of what happened

on a battlefield just as easily as it covers a front lawn. In

Chapter 11 we will also see how the seasons march on, paying no

attention at all to the desperate gyrations of the two-legged beings

struggling on the surface of the earth. Blossoms come out in spring;

rain during the summer leaves the men soaked and caked with mud.

Nature is so big it doesn't even notice man.

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At last Paul's unit clambers numbly into the trucks, too battered to

care about the insensitive men at the dressing station with all

their babbling about numbers and labels. Driving back to camp, the

standing men mindlessly duck their heads at each call of "Wire"- a

warning of low, dense, overhead telephone lines. It is raining, and

the rain, Paul says, "falls in our hearts."

CHAPTER_5

CHAPTER 5

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After the nightmare in Chapter 4, we're ready for some relief, and

this chapter offers it. Remarque- or Paul- shows us by contrast how

friendship can create a tiny island within the sea of death.

Once again the men idle behind the lines, nonchalantly killing

lice while they talk about plans for after the war. Suddenly the newly

assigned Himmelstoss appears and roles are reversed: they are the

veterans. Tjaden sneers at the man and rudely refuses to salute. The

others enjoy the encounter, but, once it is over and Tjaden and

Himmelstoss have stormed off in different directions, they go right

back to their discussion. Paul does some counting- of the twelve

privates among the 20 classmates who volunteered as a group, seven are

already dead, four are wounded, and one is insane. Muller and Kropp

and Paul feel lost. Kat and Westhus and even Himmelstoss can return to

their old jobs after the war, but what future do Muller, Kropp, and

Paul have? Kropp, the intellectual, puts the fate of his generation

into the simplest of words: "The war has ruined us for everything."

Paul agrees. They no longer care about "achieving" or believe in the

progress of civilization. They know only war.

The discussion ends when Himmelstoss comes steaming back. He wants

Tjaden. Kropp and Muller comment on ways to "get" Himmelstoss, and

Paul observes how pitiful their goals have become. The biggest

ambition they have left is to knock the conceit out of a mailman. Half

an hour later Himmelstoss is back, still seeking Tjaden. He interrupts

their card game. Kropp angrily points to puffs of antiaircraft fire

high above them and tells Himmelstoss off: What does he want them to

do? Salute and ask permission before they die? Himmelstoss

disappears like a comet, with Kropp obviously added to his complaint

list.

That evening Lieutenant Bertinck gives Himmelstoss's complaints a

fair review, and he does punish Kropp and Tjaden but only lightly,

with open arrest behind wire fencing instead of closed arrest,

locked up in a cellar. Kat and Paul play cards with the two

prisoners far into the night, but events haven't erased Kat's memory

of the geese. With a little bribery, he and Paul hitch a ride to the

spot. And then we enjoy the most comic scene of the novel! Try reading

it aloud: Paul, in the goose-shed, battling a bulldog and kicking

geese in order to steal a goose and toss it to Kat. Our formerly

law-abiding schoolboy is even ready to shoot some farmer's dog to

steal the man's property! But to Kat and Paul, it's a soldier's

right to supplement his rations however he can. At last Paul succeeds,

and he and Kat spend the rest of the night in quiet camaraderie in

an out-of-the-way shed, cleaning, roasting, basting, and eating all

the goose they want. Near dawn they pack up the feathers for later

use. Extending their circle of peace and brotherhood, they take the

rest of the meat to Tjaden and Kropp. For the moment, all's right in

their world.

CHAPTER_6

CHAPTER 6

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This chapter opens a whole new stage in the novel. Battered and

numbed as Chapter 4 left Paul and his friends, with its screaming

horses and twice-killed corpses, it was only one night- a series of

flash impressions of war. Now Remarque moves Paul- and us- into the

deadening cage of weeks of trench warfare. In 1929 a few critics

accused Remarque of sensationalizing the war in chapters like this

one, of deliberately trying to shock readers to sell more books. The

National Socialists, or Nazis, who were then coming to power,

pounced on every mention of worn-out equipment or lack of supplies

as an attack on the Fatherland. But everyone else found Remarque's

account, if anything, an understated report on the horrors of war

for men on either side. Things that we world scream about at home-

infestations of rats or days without food- are simply reported as

facts of the soldier's life. The chapter also helps us see why

fighting men sometimes lose religious faith: they see only blind

luck in operation on the battlefield, no evidence of the orderly

plan of a loving God. For men Paul's age, a scene glimpsed on the

way to the front says it all: brand new coffins, stacked against a

bombed-out schoolhouse. The scene predicts their future and shows that

nothing remains of their past.

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NOTE: WORLD WAR I TRENCH WARFARE In World War I, attacks changed

from those of earlier wars, since a machine gun behind barbed wire

could mow down whole columns of attackers. Flag-waving cavalry charges

were replaced with prolonged bombardment, followed by days upon days

of infantry attacks and counterattacks. Often, both sides ended up

in their original positions. Battles became sieges, the aim simply

being to drain the other side's resources. As it became clear that

this was static warfare- war at a standstill- leaders began to compute

even human casualties like an inventory of shells or fuel. Any loss

was acceptable if the enemy loss was greater. In the 1916 battle of

the Somme, for instance, casualties totaled more than one million,

approximately one man for every four square yards of contested ground.

Trenches became fortresses: above ground- barbed wire, mines, and

a maze of foxholes; below ground- command posts, supplies, and damp,

rat-infested living quarters. Men burrowed in these places for months,

surrounded by corpses and exposed to constant danger from gas and

artillery. They hoped to be wounded seriously enough to be sent to the

rear for convalescence. Morale grew so bad by the spring of 1917

that mutinies broke out in some French, Italian, and Russian units.

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Paul remarks that the trenches are in poor condition. For days his

group loafs and makes war on the rats, rats so voracious they devoured

two cats and a dog in an adjoining sector. At night the enemy sends

gas; by day, observation balloons. Morale is lowered by rumors of

tanks, low-flying planes, and flame-throwers. Deafening bombardment

continues; the trench is cratered and battered. Food cannot be brought

up. One night the men battle a swarm of fleeing rats; one noon a

recruit turns into a raving madman from being enclosed in the

underground living quarters. That night the dugout survives a direct

hit. Suddenly the nearer explosions stop, and the French attack.

Paul's company fight and throw grenades and use their sharpened spades

like wild beasts, killing to save themselves. The fight continues into

the next day, Paul's side chasing the retreating French right into

their own trenches. They seize what provisions they can carry and

clear out. Back in their own trench, they are too tired even to

enjoy their booty- the rare luxuries of corned beef, bread, and

cognac.

Night comes, and Paul, on sentry duty, dreams of cloisters and an

avenue of poplar trees- quiet dreams in a place where there is no

quiet. He believes his generation is lost, unable ever to have

innocent peace again. For several days attacks and counterattacks

alternate; the dead pile up between the trenches. The men search two

days in vain for a crying man. The dead swell and hiss and belch

with gas; the smell is nauseating. On quiet nights the soldiers search

for souvenir parachute silk and for copper bands from bombs. Two

butterflies settle one morning on a skull. Three layers of bodies fill

a huge shell hole. Recruits in clothes too big fall like flies; a