Read Online All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque - Free Book Online Page A

club every morning. To Kropp he says warmly: “If I were in your place I’d see to it that I became a lieutenant. Then you could grind him till the water in his backside boils.”
    “And you, Detering!” asks Müller like an inquisitor. He’s a born schoolmaster with all his questions.
    Detering is sparing with his words. But on this subject he speaks. He looks at the sky and says only the one sentence: “I would go straight on with the harvesting.”
    Then he gets up and walks off.
    He is worried. His wife has to look after the farm. They’ve already taken away two more of his horses. Every day he reads the papers that come, to see whether it is raining in his little corner of Oldenburg. They haven’t brought in the hay yet.
    At this moment Himmelstoss appears. He comes straight up to our group. Tjaden’s face turns red. He stretches his length on the grass and shuts his eyes in excitement.
    Himmelstoss is a little hesitant, his gait becomes slower. Then he marches up to us. No one makes any motion to stand up. Kropp looks up at him with interest.
    He continues to stand in front of us and wait. As no one says anything he launches a “Well!”
    A couple of seconds go by. Apparently Himmelstoss doesn’t quite know what to do. He would like most to set us all on the run again. But he seems to have learned already that the front-line isn’t a parade ground. He tries it on though, and by addressing himself to one instead of to all of us hopes to get some response. Kropp is nearest, so he favours him.
    “Well, you here too?”
    But Albert’s no friend of his. “A bit longer than you, I fancy,” he retorts.
    The red moustache twitches: “You don’t recognize me any more, what?”
    Tjaden now opens his eyes. “I do though.”
    Himmelstoss turns to him: “Tjaden, isn’t it?”
    Tjaden lifts his head. “And do you know what you are?”
    Himmelstoss is disconcerted. “Since when have we become so familiar? I don’t remember that we ever slept in the gutter together?”
    He has no idea what to make of the situation. He didn’t expect this open hostility. But he is on his guard: he has already had some rot dinned into him about getting a shot in the back.
    The question about the gutter makes Tjaden so mad that he becomes almost witty: “No you slept there by yourself.”
    Himmelstoss begins to boil. But Tjaden gets in ahead of him. He must bring off his insult: “Wouldn’t you like to know what you are? A dirty hound, that’s what you are. I’ve been wanting to tell you that for a long time.”
    The satisfaction of months shines in his dull pig’s eyes as he spits out: “Dirty hound!”
    Himmelstoss lets fly too, now. “What’s that, you muckrake, you dirty peat-stealer? Stand up there, bring your heels together when your superior officer speaks to you.”
    Tjaden waves him off. “You take a run and jump at yourself, Himmelstoss.”
    Himmelstoss is a raging book of army regulations. The Kaiser couldn’t be more insulted. “Tjaden, I command you, as your superior officer: Stand up!”
    “Anything else you would like?” asks Tjaden.
    “Will you obey my order or not?”
    Tjaden replies, without knowing it, in the well-known classical phrase.
    At the same time he ventilates his backside.
    “I’ll have you court-martialled,” storms Himmelstoss.
    We watch him disappear in the direction of the Orderly Room. Haie and Tjaden burst into a regular peat-digger’s bellow. Haie laughs so much that he dislocates his jaw, and suddenly stands there helpless with his mouth wide open. Albert has to put it back again by giving it a blow with his fist.
    Kat is troubled: “If he reports you, it’ll be pretty serious.”
    “Do you think he will?” asks Tjaden.
    “Sure to,” I say.
    “The least you’ll get will be five days close arrest,” says Kat.
    That doesn’t worry Tjaden. “Five days clink are five days rest.”
    “And if they send you to the Fortress?” urges the thorough-going Müller.
    “Well,