A Vertext of Chapters 2-4 of All Quiet on the Western Front

Chapter 2 page 20 Though Muller would be delighted to have Kemmerich’s boots, he is really quite as sympathetic as another who could not bear to think of such a thing for grief. He merely see things clearly. Were Kemmerich able to make any use of the boots, then Muller would rather go bare-foot over barbed wire than scheme how to get a hold of them”

Chapter 2 page 21 We have lost all sense of other considerations because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us. And good boots are scarce.

Chapter 2 page 21 [back before] We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character…We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer.”

Chapter 2 page 25 In spite of ourselves we tripped and emptied the bucket [of manure] over his legs. He raved, but the limit had been reached…he growled: “You’ll drink this! – but that was the end of his authority.”

Chapter 2 page 26 We became hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough—and that was good; for these attributes were just what we lacked. Had we gone into the trenches without this period of training most of us would certainly have gone mad. Only thus were we prepared for what awaited us.

Chapter 2 page 29 [Looking at the dying Franz] But when we go bathing and strip, suddenly we have slender legs again and slight shoulders. We are no longer soldiers but little more than boys; no one would believe that we could carry packs…The whole world ought to pass by this bed and say: “That is Franz Kemmerich, nineteen and a half years old, he doesn’t want to die. Let him not die!”

Chapter 2 page 33 Muller stands in front of the hut waiting for me. I give him the boots. We go in and he tries them on. They fit well. He roots among his supplies and offers me a fine piece of saveloy. With it goes hot tea and rum.”

Chapter 3 page 35 Reinforcments have arrived..The vacancies have been filled and the sacks of straw in the huts are already booked…Kropp nudges me: “Seen the infants?”

Chapter 3 page 37 [on one of Kat’s many discoveries] They go off to explore. Half an hour later they are back gain with arms full of straw. Kat has found a horse- box with straw in it.

Chapter 3 page 41 Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration or war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins….the wrong people do the fighting.

Chapter 3 page 43 “Surely Himmelstoss was a very different fellow as a postman,” say I…”Then how does it come that he’s such a bully as a drill sergeant?”

Chapter 3 page 43 “For instance, if you train a dog to eat potatoes and then afterwards put a piece of meat in front of him, he’ll snap at it, it’s his nature…”

Chapter 3 page 49 [Haie] stretched out his right arm preparatory to giving him a box on the ear [and] he looked as if he were going to reach down for a star”

Chapter 3 page 49 His [Himmelstoss’s] striped postman’s backside gleamed in the moonlight.

Chapter 3 page 49 “Revenge is black pudding.”

Chapter 4 page 52 The gun-emplacements are camouflaged…and look like a kind of military Feast of the Tabernacles.”

Chapter 4 page 54 It is the front, the consciousness of the front, that makes this contact…We start out for the front plain soldiers, either cheerful or gloomy: then come the first gun-emplacements and every word of our speech has a new ring.

Chapter 4 page 55 From the earth…sustaining forces pour into us. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. Earth!—Earth!—Earth!

Chapter 4 page 56 We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers– we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals.”

Chapter 4 page 57 Everyone carefully look and mark up the page – looking for two very strikingly similar images. Give everyone time. This is the page that begins with “Mist and the smoke of guns…” and ends with “We push on to the pioneer dump” Go back to earlier quotes 12 & 13

Chapter 4 page 59 It reminds me of flocks of wild geese when I hear them [the exploding shells]. Last autumn the wild geese flew day after day across the path of the shells. Later – the plane “a black insect is caught between them [the searchlights] and tries to escape—the airman. He hesitates, is blinded [Joe Behm] and falls.

Chapter 4 page 60 I see the rockets, and for a moment have the impression that I have fallen asleep at a garden fete…Mighty fine fireworks if they weren’t so dangerous.

Chapter 4 page 62 The young recruit – his panic – his helmet – how he loses his underpants…

Chapter 4 page The screaming of the beasts becomes louder..Detering raves and yells out: “Shoot them! Shoot them, can’t you? Damn you again!”… If we could only see the animals we should be able to endure it better. We can bear almost anything. But now the sweat breaks out on us. We must get up and run no matter where, but these cries can no longer be heard. And it is not men, only horses.

Chapter 4 page 64 Detering: “Like to know what harm they’ve done.” “I tell you it is the vilest baseness to use horses in the war.”

Chapter 4 page 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.

Chapter 4 page 72 [Upon examining a wounded recruit]: He is the fair-headed boy of a little while ago. Kat looks around and whispers: “Shouldn’t we just take a revolver and put an end to it?”

Chapter 4 page 73 Kat shakes his head. “Such a kid---” He repeats it. “Young innocents—”