All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque Page B

have long forked poles. They watch for telephone wires which hang crosswise over the road so low that they might easily pull our heads off. The two fellows take them at the right moment on their poles and lift them over behind us. We hear their call "Mind-wire-," dip the knee in a half-sleep and straighten up again.
    Monotonously the lorries sway, monotonously come the calls, monotonously falls the rain. It falls on our heads and on the heads of the dead up in the line, on the body of the little recruit with the wound that is so much too big for his hip; it falls on Kemmerich's grave; it falls in our hearts.
    An explosion sounds somewhere. We wince, our eyes become tense, our hands are ready to vault over the side of the lorry into the ditch by the road.
    Nothing happens-only the monotonous cry: "Mind-wire,"-our knees bend-we are again half asleep.

FIVE

    Killing each separate louse is a tedious business when a man has hundreds. The little beasts are hard and the everlasting cracking with one's fingernails very soon becomes wearisome. So Tjaden has rigged up the lid of a boot-polish tin with a piece of wire over the lighted stump of a candle. The lice are simply thrown into this little pan. Crack! and they're done for.
    We sit around with our shirts on our knees, our bodies naked to the warm air and our hands at work. Haie has a particularly fine brand of louse: they have a red cross on their heads. He suggests that he brought them back from the hospital at Thourhout, where they attended personally on a surgeon-general. He says he means to use the fat that slowly accumulates in the tin-lid for polishing his boots, and roars with laughter for half an hour at his own joke.
    But he gets little response to-day; we are too preoccupied with another affair.
    The rumour has materialized. Himmelstoss has come. He appeared yesterday; we've already heard the well-known voice. He seems to have overdone it with a couple of young recruits on the ploughed field at home and unknown to him the son of the local magistrate was watching. That cooked his goose.
    He will get some surprises here. Tjaden has been meditating for hours what to say to him. Haie gazes thoughtfully at his great paws and winks at me. The thrashing was the high water mark of his life. He tells me he often dreams of it. Kropp and Müller are amusing themselves. From somewhere or other, probably the pioneer-cook-house, Kropp has bagged for himself a mess-tin full of beans. Müller squints hungrily into it but checks himself and says "Albert, what would you do if it were suddenly peace-time again?"
    "There won't be any peace-time," says Albert bluntly.
    "Well, but if---" persists Müller, "what would
    you do?"
    "Clear out of this!" growls Kropp.
    "Of course. And then what?"
    "Get drunk," says Albert.
    "Don't talk rot, I mean seriously-"
    "So do I," says Kropp, "what else should a man do?"
    Kat becomes interested. He levies tribute on Kropp's tin of beans, swallows some, then considers for a while and says: "You might get drunk first, of course, but then you'd take the next train for home and mother. Peace-time, man, Albert---"
    He fumbles in his oil-cloth pocket-book for a photograph and suddenly shows it all round. "My old woman!" Then he puts it back and swears: "Damned lousy war---"
    "It's all very well for you to talk," I tell him. "You've a wife and children."
    "True," he nods, "and I have to see to it that they've something to eat."
    We laugh. "They won't lack for that, Kat, you'd scrounge it from somewhere."
    Müller is insatiable and gives himself no peace. He wakes Haie Westhus out of his dream. "Haie, what would you do if it was peace-time?"
    "Give you a kick in the backside for the way you talk," I say. "How does it come about exactly?"
    "How does the cow-shit come on the roof?" retorts Müller laconically, and turns to Haie Westhus again.
    It is too much for Haie. He shakes his freckled head:
    "You mean when the war's over?"
    "Exactly. You've said it."
    "Well,