All Quiet on the Western Front / На Западном фронте без перемен. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Эрих Мария Ремарк
kitchens. Just beyond the wood we climb down from the trucks and they go back. They will be picking us up again before first light tomorrow.
Mist and smoke from the artillery is chest-high over the meadows. The moon is shining on it. Troops are moving on the roadway. The steel helmets give a dull reflection in the moonlight. Heads and rifles stick out from the white mists, nodding heads and swaying rifle barrels.
Further on, the mist clears. The heads turn into whole figures – tunics, trousers and boots come out of the mist as if from a pool of milk. They form into a column. The column marches, straight ahead, the figures become a wedge, and you can no longer make out individual men, just this dark wedge, pushing forwards, made even more strange by the heads and rifles bobbing along on the misty lake. A column – not men.
Light artillery and munition wagons move in from a side road. The backs of the horses shine in the moonlight and their movements are good to see – they toss their heads and their eyes flash. The guns and the wagons glide past against an indistinct background like a lunar landscape, while the steel-helmeted cavalrymen look like knights in armour from a bygone age[94] – somehow it is moving and beautiful.
We make for the equipment dump. Some of our men load the angled, sharpened iron uprights on to their shoulders, the rest stick straight iron bars through rolls of barbed-wire and carry them away. They are awkward and heavy loads.
The terrain gets more pitted. Reports come back to us from up ahead: ‘Watch where you’re going, there’s a deep shell hole on the left’ – ‘Mind the trench’ —
We keep our eyes wide open, and test the ground with our feet and with the bars before we put our weight down. The column stops suddenly; you bang your face into the barbed-wire roll that the man in front is carrying, and you swear.
A couple of shot-up trucks[95] are in the way. A new order comes: ‘Pipes and cigarettes out!’ We are close to the frontline trenches.
In the meantime it has gone completely dark. We skirt around a little copse and our sector is there before us.
There is an indistinct reddish glow from one end of the horizon to the other. It changes constantly, punctuated by flashes from the gun batteries. Verey lights[96] go up high above it, silver and red balls which burst with a shower of white, red and green stars. French rockets shoot up, the ones with silk parachutes that open in the air and let them drift down really slowly. They light up everything as clear as day, and their brightness even reaches across to us, so that we can see our shadows stark against the ground. The lights hang in the sky for minutes at a time before they burn out. New ones shoot up at once, everywhere, and there are still the green, red and blue stars.
‘Going to be a bad do[97],’ says Kat.
The thunder of the guns gets stronger until it becomes a single dull roar, and then it breaks down again into individual bursts. The dry voiced machine-guns rattle. Above our heads the air is full of invisible menace, howling, whistling and hissing. This is from the smaller guns; but every so often comes the deep sound of the big crump shells, the really heavy stuff, moving through the dark and landing far behind us. They make a bellowing, throaty, distant noise, like a rutting stag, and they go far above the howl and the whistle of the small shells.
Searchlights begin to sweep the black sky. They skim across it like huge blackboard pointers[98], tapering down at the bottom. One of them pauses, shaking a little. At once another is beside it, they cross and there is a black, winged insect trapped and trying to escape: an airman. He wavers, is dazzled and falls.
We ram the iron posts in firmly at set intervals. There are always two men holding the roll while the others pay out the barbed-wire. It is that horrible wire with a lot of long spikes, close together. I am out of practice at paying it out, and rip my hand open.
After a few hours we have finished. But there is still some time before the trucks are due. Most of us lie down and sleep. I try to as well, but it is too cold. You can tell that we are not far from the sea, because you are always waking up from the cold.
At one point I do fall into a deep sleep. When I wake up suddenly with a jolt, I have no idea where I am. I see the stars and I see the rockets, and just for a moment I imagine that I have fallen asleep in the garden at home, during a fireworks party of some sort. I don’t know whether it is morning or evening, and I lie there in the pale cradle of dawn waiting for the gentle words which must surely come, gentle and comforting – am I crying? I put my hand to my face; it is baffling, am I a child? Smooth skin – it only lasts for a second and then I recognize the silhouette of Katczinsky. He is sitting there quite calmly, old soldier that he is, smoking his pipe – one of those with a fid over the bowl, of course. When he sees that I am awake he says, ‘That made you jump. It was only a detonator, it whizzed off into the bushes over there.’
I sit up; I feel terribly alone. It is good that Kat is there. He looks thoughtfully at the front and says, ‘Lovely fireworks. If only they weren’t so dangerous.’
A shell lands behind us. A couple of the new recruits jump up in fright. A few minutes later another shell comes over, closer than before. Kat knocks out his pipe. ‘Here we go.’
It has started. We crawl away as fast as we can. The next shell lands amongst us.
Some of the men scream. Green rockets go up over the horizon. Dirt flies up. Shrapnel buzzes. You can hear it landing when the noise of the blast has long gone.
Close by us there is a recruit, a blond lad, and he is terrified. He has pressed his face into his hands. His helmet has rolled off. I reach for it and try to put it on to his head. He looks up, pushes the helmet away and huddles in under my arm like a child, his head against my chest. His narrow shoulders are shaking, shoulders just like Kemmerich had.
I let him stay there. But to get some use out of his helmet I shove it over his backside, not as some kind of a joke, but deliberately, because it’s the most exposed area. Even though the flesh is solid, a wound there can be bloody painful, and besides, you have to be on your stomach for months in a military hospital, and afterwards you are pretty certain to have a limp.
There’s been a direct hit somewhere not far off. Between the impacts you can hear screaming.
At last it calms down. The shellfire has swept over us and moved on to the back line of reserve trenches. We risk a look out. Red rockets are shimmering in the sky. Probably there will be an attack.
It stays quiet where we are. I sit up and shake the recruit by the shoulder. ‘It’s all over, old son. We got through again.’
He looks around in bewilderment. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ I tell him.
He notices his helmet and puts it on his head. Slowly he comes to himself. Then suddenly he blushes scarlet and his face has a look of embarrassment. Cautiously he puts his hand to his rear end[99] and gives me an agonized look. I understand at once: the barrage scared the shit out of him. That wasn’t the precise reason that I put his helmet where I did – but all the same I comfort him. ‘No shame in that, plenty of soldiers before you have filled their pants when they came under fire for the first time. Go behind that bush, chuck your underpants away, and that’s that —’
He clears off. It gets quieter, but the screaming doesn’t stop. ‘What’s up, Albert?’ I ask.
‘A couple of the columns over there got direct hits.’
The screaming goes on and on. It can’t be men, they couldn’t scream that horribly.
‘Wounded horses,’ says Kat.
I have never heard a horse scream and I can hardly believe it. There is a whole world of pain in that sound, creation itself under torture, a wild and horrifying agony. We go pale. Detering sits up. ‘Bastards, bastards! For Christ’s sake shoot them!’
He is a farmer and used to handling horses. It
bygone age – ушедшая эпоха
shot-up trucks – подбитые повозки
Verey lights – сигнальные ракеты
Going to be a bad do
blackboard pointers – указка для школьной доски
rear end