Life Did Not Intend To Make Us

But Probably That's The Way Of The World - When We Have Finally Learned Something We're Too Old To Apply It - And So It Goes, Wave After Wave, Generation After Generation. No One Learns Anything At All From Anyone Else.

Do I Walk? Have I Feet Still? I Raise My Eyes, I Let Them Move Round, And Turn Myself With Them, One Circle, One Circle, And I Stand In The Midst. All Is As Usual. Only The Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky Has Died. Then I Know Nothing More.

The Soldier Is On Friendlier Terms Than Other Men With His Stomach And Intestines. Three-quarters Of His Vocabulary Is Derived From These Regions, And They Give An Intimate Flavour To Expressions Of His Greatest Joy As Well As Of His Deepest Indignation. It Is Impossible To Express Oneself In Any Other Way So Clearly And Pithily. Our Families And Our Teachers Will Be Shocked When We Go Home, But Here It Is The Universal Language.

The Room Shall Speak, It Must Catch Me Up And Hold Me, I Want To Feel That I Belong Here, I Want To Hearken And Know When I Go Back To The Front Line That The War Will Sink Down, Be Drowned Utterly In The Great Home-coming Tide, Know That It Will Then Be Past For Ever, And Not Gnaw Us Continually, That It Will Have None But An Outward Power Over Us...nothing Stirs; Listless And Wretched, Like A Condemned Man, I Sit There And The Past Withdraws Itself. And At The Same Time I Fear To Importune It Too Much, Because I Do Not Know What Might Happen Then. I Am A Soldier, I Must Cling To That.

On The Steps Is A Machine-gun Ready For Action. The Square Is Empty; Only The Streets That Lead Into It Are Jammed With People. It Would Be Madness To Go Farther - The Machine-gun Is Covering The Square.