Youll be going home now, says Kropp. You would have had to wait at least another three or four months before you got leave. Kemmerich nods. I cant look at his hands, they are like wax. The dirt of the trenches is underneath his fingernails, and it is bluey-grey, like poison. It occurs to me that those fingernails will go on getting longer and longer for a good while yet, like some ghastly underground growths, long after Kemmerich has stopped breathing. I can see them before my eyes, twisting like corkscrews and growing and growing, and with them the hair on his caved-in skull, like grass on good earth, just like grass how can all that be? Muller leans forward. Weve brought your things, Franz. Kemmerich gestures with one hand. Put them under the bed. Muller does as he says. Kemmerich starts on about the watch again. How can we possibly calm him down without making him suspicious?
Muller bobs up again with a pair of airmans flying boots, best quality English ones made of soft yellow leather, the sort that come up to the knee, with lacing all the way to the top something really worth having. The sight of them makes Muller excited, and he holds the soles against his own clumsy boots and says, Are you going to take these with you, Franz?
All three of us are thinking the same thing: even if he did get better he would only be able to wear one of them, so they wouldnt be any use to him. But as things are it would be a pity to leave them here the orderlies are bound to pinch them the moment he is dead.
Muller repeats, Why dont you leave them here?
Kemmerich doesnt want to. They are his prize possession.
We could do a swap, suggests Muller, trying again, you can really do with boots like that out here. But Kemmerich wont be persuaded.
I kick Muller, and reluctantly he puts the splendid boots back under the bed.
We chat for a bit longer, and then say goodbye. Chin up[34], Franz.
I promise him that I will come back tomorrow. Muller says that he will as well. He is still thinking about the flying boots and he wants to keep an eye on things.
Kemmerich groans. He is feverish[35]. We get hold of a medical orderly outside, and try and persuade him to give Kemmerich a shot of morphia.
He says no. If we wanted to give morphia to everyone wed need buckets of the stuff
Only give it to officers, then, do you? snarls Kropp.
I step in quickly and the first thing I do is give the orderly a cigarette. He takes it. Then I ask him, Are you allowed to give shots at all?
He is annoyed. If you think I cant, what are you asking me for ?
I press a few more cigarettes into his hand. Just as a favour
Well, OK, he says. Kropp goes in with him, because he doesnt trust him and wants to see him do it. We wait outside.
Muller starts on again about the flying boots. They would fit me perfectly. In these clodhoppers even my blisters get blisters. Do you think hell last until we come off duty tomorrow? If he goes during the night weve seen the last of the boots
Albert comes back and says, Do you reckon ?
Had it, says Muller, and thats that.
We walk back to camp. Im thinking about the letter I shall have to write to Kemmerichs mother tomorrow. Im shivering, I could do with a stiff drink. Muller is pulling up grass stems and hes chewing on one. Suddenly little Kropp tosses his cigarette away, stamps on it like a madman, stares round with an unfocused and disturbed look on his face and stammers, Shit! Shit! The whole damned thing is a load of shit!
We walk on for a long time. Kropp calms down we know what was wrong, its just the strain of being at the front, we all get that way from time to time.
Muller asks him, What did Kantorek say in his letter?
He laughs. He calls us young men of iron.
That makes the three of us laugh, though not because it is funny. Kropp curses. He is happy to be able to talk again
And yes, thats it, that is what they think, those hundred thousand Kantoreks. Young men of iron. Young? None of us is more than twenty. But young? Young men? That was a long time ago. We are old now.
II
I find it strange to think that at home in a drawer there is the first part of a play I once started to write called Saul, and a stack of poems as well. I spent so many evenings on them we all did things like that but it has all become so unreal to me that I cant even imagine it any more.
When we came out here we were cut off, whether we liked it or not, from everything we had done up to that point. We often try to find a reason or an explanation for this, but we can never quite manage it. Things are particularly confused for us twenty-year-olds, for Kropp, Muller, Leer and me, the ones Kantorek called young men of iron. The older men still have firm ties to their earlier lives they have property, wives, children, jobs and interests, and these bonds are all so strong that the war cant break them. But for us twenty-year-olds there are only our parents, and for some of us a girlfriend. That isnt much, because at our age parental influence is at its weakest, and girls havent really taken over yet. Apart from that, we really didnt have much else; the occasional passion for something, a few hobbies, school; our lives didnt go much further than that as yet. And now nothing is left of it all.