Эрих Ремарк - All Quiet on the Western Front / На Западном фронте без перемен. Книга для чтения на английском языке

For the time being our trenches are free of rats. They have moved up ahead, and we know why. They are getting fat; whenever we see one, we shoot it. At night we hear once again the rolling noises from over there. During the day we just get ordinary shellfire, so we have a chance to sort out our trenches. There is also a certain amount of entertainment – the airmen see to that. Every day the audience can watch any number of dogfights.

We don’t mind the fighter planes, but we hate the reconnaissance aircraft like the plague; they are the ones that direct the artillery fire towards us. A few moments after they appear there is a hail of shrapnel and shells. Because of that we lose eleven men in a single day, five stretcher-bearers amongst them. Two are so smashed up that Tjaden reckons you could scrape them off the trench wall with a spoon and bury them in a mess-tin. Another one has his legs and the lower part of his body torn off. He’s dead, leaning with his chest against the trench wall, his face is bright yellow and there is a cigarette glowing between his bearded bps. It carries on glowing until it bums down to his lips, then goes out with a hiss.

For the moment we place the dead into a huge shell hole. They are three deep so far.

Suddenly the shelling starts to thunder again. Soon we are sitting there, tense and rigid once more in that helpless waiting.

Attack, counter-attack, charge, counter-strike – they are all just words, but what is contained in them. We lose a lot of men, mainly recruits. Fresh troops are being sent into our sector again. They are from one of the newly raised regiments, almost exclusively young men from the latest age group to be drafted. They’ve had hardly any training, nothing more than a bit of theory, before they were sent up the line. For example, they know what a hand-grenade is, but they have no idea about taking cover, and above all else they can’t spot things. A ridge has to be two feet high before they can make it out.

Even though we desperately need reinforcements, the new recruits almost make more trouble for us than they are worth. In this sector, where we are under heavy attack, they are helpless and go down like flies. Modem trench warfare demands knowledge and experience, you have to have a good grasp of the he of the land, have the sounds and effects of the different shells in your ear, you have to be able to work out in advance where they are going to land, what the scatter will be like, how to take cover.

These young recruits, of course, know as good as nothing about all that. They are decimated because they can’t tell shrapnel from high explosive [166] high explosive – осколочный снаряд , and they are mown down because they are listening in terror to the howl of the great coal-box shells [167] coal-box shells – неопасный крупнокалиберный «чемодан» , which aren’t dangerous because they are coming down way behind us, but don’t hear the whistling noise, the quiet whirring of the little bastards with the low lateral spread. They huddle together like sheep instead of fanning out, and even the wounded are picked off like rabbits by the fighter planes.

The pale, turnip faces, the pitifully clenched hands, the wretched bravery of these poor devils, who advance and attack regardless, these poor plucky devils, who have been so browbeaten that they don’t even dare to scream out, and just whimper softly for their mothers as they lie there with their chests and guts and arms and legs torn to pieces, and shut up when someone comes along.

Their dead, downy, thin-featured faces have that awful absence of any expression that you see in dead children.

You get a lump in your throat when you see them, the way they go over, and run, and drop. You want to thrash them for being so stupid, and pick them up and take them away from here, away from this place where they don’t belong. They are wearing battledress, trousers and army boots, but for most of them the uniform is too big and flaps about, their shoulders are too narrow, their bodies too slight; there weren’t any uniforms available in these children’s sizes.

To every one old soldier, between five and ten of the recruits are killed.

A surprise gas attack carries off a lot of them. They didn’t even begin to expect what was waiting for them. We find a whole dugout full of them, their faces blue and their lips black. In one of the shell holes some of them have taken their gas-masks off too soon; they didn’t realize that the gas lies longest down at the bottom, and when they saw others without their masks they tore theirs off, and swallowed enough to burn their lungs to pieces. There is no hope for them; they are choking to death, coughing up blood and suffocating.

In one section of the trench I suddenly find myself face to face with Himmelstoss. We have taken cover in the same dugout. Everyone is lying down out of breath, waiting for the advance.

Although I am pretty agitated, when I rush out one thought still comes into my head: I can’t see Himmelstoss. I dive back quickly into the dugout and find him in the corner, pretending to be wounded, even though he only has a slight scratch. His face looks as if he has been beaten up. It’s shell shock – after all, he is new here. But it makes me mad that the young recruits are outside and he is down here.

‘Out!’ I shout.

He doesn’t move. His lips quiver, his moustache twitches.

‘Out!’ I shout again.

He pulls his legs in, presses himself against the wall and bares his teeth like a mad dog.

I grab him by the arm and try to pull him up. He makes a strangled noise. Then something in me snaps. I grab him by the shoulders and shake him like a sack, so that his head swings backwards and forwards, and scream into his face, ‘You shit, get out of here – you little shit, you bastard, trying to hide, are you?’ His eyes glaze over, and I bang his head against the wall – ‘You sod’ – I hit him in the ribs – ‘You swine’ – I shove him forwards, headfirst out of the dugout.

Just at that moment a new wave of troops comes over. They have a lieutenant with them. He sees us and shouts, ‘Move on, move on, close up, close up —’ and his command does what my blows couldn’t manage. Himmelstoss hears the superior officer, looks around as if he has just woken up, and runs to catch up.

I follow on, and see him bounding along, the old, smart, parade-ground Himmelstoss again, who has even overtaken the lieutenant and is away out in front…

Continuous fire, defensive fire, curtain fire, trench mortars, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades [168] Continuous fire, defensive fire, curtain fire, trench mortars, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades – Шквальный огонь, заградительный огонь, огневая завеса, мины, газ, танки, пулеметы, ручные гранаты – words, words, but they embrace all the horrors of the world.

Our faces are crusted with dirt, our thoughts are a shambles, we are dead tired; when the attack comes, a lot of our men have to be punched hard so that they wake up and go along; our eyes are red and swollen, our hands are ripped, our knees are bleeding and our elbows raw.

Is it weeks that pass – or months – or years? It is only days. We watch how time disappears before our eyes in the ashen faces of the dying, we shovel food into ourselves, we run, we throw, we shoot, we kill, we hurl ourselves down, we are weak and dulled, and the only thing that keeps us going is that there are even weaker, even more dulled, even more helpless men than us who look at us wide-eyed, and take us for gods who can sometimes outrun death himself.

In the few rest periods we try to teach them. ‘Look, see that one like a toffee-apple [169] toffee-apple – яблоко, покрытое слоем карамели ? That’s a mortar coming across. Keep down, it’ll go over us. But if it comes your way, get the hell out! You can run away from those.’