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

fast.
    Kat and I proceed to free the wounded arm. The coffin lid is loose and bursts open, we are easily able to pull it off, we toss the corpse out, it slides down to the bottom of the shell-hole, then we try to loosen the under-part.
    Fortunately the man swoons and Kropp is able to help us. We no longer have to be careful, but work away till the coffin gives with a sigh before the spade that we have dug in under it.
    It has grown lighter. Kat takes a piece of the lid, places it under the shattered arm, and we wrap all our bandages round it. For the moment we can do no more.
    Inside the gas-mask my head booms and roars—it is nigh bursting. My lungs are tight, they breathe always the same hot, used-up air, the veins on my temples are swollen. I feel I am suffocating.
    A grey light filters through to us. I climb out over the edge of the shell-hole. In the dirty twilight lies a leg torn clean off; the boot is quite whole, I take that all in at a glance. Now something stands up a few yards distant. I polish the windows, in my excitement they are immediately dimmed again. I peer through them, the man there no longer wears his mask.
    I wait some seconds—he has not collapsed—he looks around and makes a few paces—rattling in my throat I tear my mask off too and fall down, the air streams into me like cold water, my eyes are bursting the wave sweeps over me and extinguishes me.
    The shelling has ceased, I turn towards the crater beckoning to the others. They take off their masks. We lift up the wounded man, one taking his splintered arm. And so we stumble off hastily.
    The graveyard is a mass of wreckage. Coffins and corpses lie strewn about. They have been killed once again; but each of them that was flung up saved one of us.
    The hedge is destroyed, the rails of the light railway are torn up and rise stiffly in the air in great arches. Someone lies in front of us. We stop; Kropp goes on alone with the wounded man.
    The man on the ground is a recruit. His hip is covered with blood; he is so exhausted that I feel for my water-bottle where I have rum and tea. Kat restrains my hand and stoops over him.
    “Where’s it got you comrade?”
    His eyes move. He is too weak to answer.
    We slit open his trousers carefully. He groans. “Gently, gently, it is much better——”
    If he has been hit in the stomach, he oughtn’t to drink anything. There’s no vomiting, that’s a good sign. We lay the hip bare. It is one mass of mince-meat and bone splinters. The joint has been hit. This lad won’t walk any more.
    I wet his temples with a moistened finger and give him a swig. His eyes move again. We see now that the right arm is bleeding as well.
    Kat spreads out two wads of dressing as wide as possible so that they will cover the wound. I look for something to bind loosely round it. We have nothing more, so I slip up the wounded man’s trouser leg still farther in order to use a piece of his underpants as a bandage. But he is wearing none. I now look at him closely. He is the fair-headed boy of a little while ago.
    In the meantime Kat has taken a bandage from a dead man’s pocket and we carefully bind the wound. I say to the youngster who looks at us fixedly: “We’re going for a stretcher now——”
    Then he opens his mouth and whispers: “Stay here——”
    “We’ll be back again soon,” says Kat. “We are only going to get a stretcher for you.”
    We don’t know if he understands. He whimpers like a child and plucks at us: “Don’t go away——”
    Kat looks around and whispers: “Shouldn’t we just take a revolver and put an end to it?”
    The youngster will hardly survive the carrying, and at the most he will only last a few days. What he has gone through so far is nothing to what he’s in for till he dies. Now he isnumb and feels nothing. In an hour he will become one screaming bundle of intolerable pain. Every day that he can live will be a howling torture. And to whom does it matter whether he has them or