And as if on purpose the firing dies away almost completely. The screams of the animals become that much clearer. You can’t tell where it is coming from any more in that quiet, silver landscape, it is invisible, ghostly, it is everywhere, between the earth and the heavens, and it swells out immeasurably. Detering is going crazy and roars out, ‘Shoot them, for Christ’s sake, shoot them!’

‘They’ve got to get the wounded men out first,’ says Kat.

We stand up and try to see where they are. If we can actually see the animals, it will be easier to cope with. Meyer has some field glasses^[100] with him. We can make out a dark group of orderlies with stretchers, and then some bigger things, black mounds that are moving. Those are the wounded horses. But not all of them. Some gallop off a little way, collapse, and then run on again. The belly of one of the horses has been ripped open and its guts are trading out. It gets its feet caught up in them and falls, but it gets to its feet again.

Detering raises his rifle and takes aim. Kat knocks the barrel upwards. ‘Are you crazy?’

Detering shudders and throws his gun on to the ground.

We sit down and press our hands over our ears. But the terrible crying and groaning and howling still gets through, it penetrates everything.

We can all stand a lot, but this brings us out in a cold sweat. You want to get up and run away, anywhere just so as not to hear that screaming any more. And it isn’t men, just horses.

Some more stretchers are moved away from the dark mass. Then a few shots ring out. The big shapes twitch a little and then become less prominent. At last! But it isn’t over yet. No one can catch the wounded animals who have bolted in terror, their wide-open mouths filled with all that pain. One of the figures goes down on one knee, a shot – one horse collapses – and then there is another. The last horse supports itself on its forelegs, and moves in a circle like a carousel, turning around in a sitting position with its forelegs stiff – probably its back is broken. The soldier runs across and shoots it down. Slowly, humbly, it sinks to the ground.

We take our hands away from our ears. The screaming has stopped. Just a long-drawn-out, dying sigh is still there in the air. Then, just like before, there are only the rockets, the singing of the shells, and the stars – and it feels almost eerie.

Detering walks about cursing. ‘What have they done to deserve that, that’s what I want to know?’ And later on he comes back to it again. His voice is agitated and he sounds as if he is making a speech when he says, ‘I tell you this: it is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into a war.’

We go back. It’s time to head for the trucks. The sky has become just a trace lighter. Three a.m. The wind is fresh and cool and at that livid hour our faces look grey.

We move slowly forwards in Indian file^[101] through the trenches and shell holes and at last we reach the foggy area once again. Katczinsky is uneasy, and that is a bad sign.

‘What’s the matter, Kat?’ asks Kropp.

‘I just wish we were home.’ Home – he means back in camp. ‘Won’t be long now, Kat.’

He is nervous. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know…’

We get to the communication trenches and then back to the meadows. The little wood is in front of us; we know every inch of ground here. We can already see the graves of the rifle brigade, with the mounds of earth still piled up, and the black crosses.

At that very moment we hear a whistling noise behind us, it gets louder, there is a crash and then a roar. We’ve ducked down – a hundred yards in front of us a wall of flame shoots up.

The next moment part of the wood is lifted up above the tree tops when the second shell hits, three or four trees go up with it and are smashed into pieces in the process. The follow-up shells are already hissing down with a sound like a safety valve^[102] – heavy fire – ‘Take cover!’ somebody shouts, ‘Take cover!’

The meadows are flat, the wood is too far away and too dangerous; the only cover is the military cemetery and the grave mounds. We stumble into the darkness, and soon every man has flattened himself behind one of the mounds.

Not a moment too soon.^[103] The dark turns into madness. It rocks and rages. Dark things, darker than the night itself, rush upon us in great waves, over us and onwards. The flashes of the explosions light up the cemetery.

There is no way out. In the light of one of the shell-bursts I risk a glance out on to the meadows. They are like a storm-tossed sea, with the flames from the impacts spurting up like fountains. No one could possibly get across that.

The wood disappears, splintered, shattered, smashed. We have to stay in the cemetery.

The earth explodes in front of us. Great clumps of it come raining down on top of us. I feel a jolt. My sleeve has been ripped by some shrapnel. I clench my fist. No pain. But that is no comfort, wounds never start to hurt until afterwards. I run my hand over the arm. It is scratched but still in one piece. Then I get a knock on the head and everything blurs. But as quick as a flash comes the thought: you mustn’t faint! I sink down into the black mud but get up again immediately. A piece of shrapnel hit my helmet, but it came from so far off that it didn’t cut through the steel. I wipe the dirt out of my eyes. A hole has been blown in the ground right in front of me, I can just about make it out^[104]. Shells don’t often land in the same place twice and I want to get into that hole. Without stopping I wriggle across towards it as fast as I can, flat as an eel on the ground – there is a whistling noise again, I curl up quickly and grab for some cover, feel something to my left and press against it, it gives, I groan, and the earth is torn up again, the blast thunders in my ears, I crawl under whatever it was that gave way when I touched it, pull it over me – it is wood, cloth, cover, cover, pretty poor cover against falling shrapnel.

I open my eyes; my fingers are gripped tight on a sleeve, an arm. A wounded soldier? I shout out to him – no answer – must be dead. My hand gropes on and finds more shattered wood – then I remember that we’ve taken cover in a cemetery.

But the shelling is stronger than anything else. It wipes out all other considerations and I just crawl deeper and deeper beneath the coffin so that it will protect me, even if Death himself is already in it.

The shell hole is gaping in front of me. I fix my eyes on it, grasping at it almost physically, I have to get to it in one jump.

Then I feel a blow in the face, and a hand grabs me by the shoulder – has the dead man come back to life? The hand shakes me, I turn my head, and in a flash of light that lasts only a second I find myself looking into Katczinsky’s face. His mouth is wide open and he is bellowing, but I can’t hear anything; he shakes me and comes closer; the noise ebbs for a moment and I can make out his voice: ‘Gas – gaaas – gaaaaas – pass it on^[105]!’

I pull out my gas-mask case… Someone is lying a little way away from me. All I can think of is that I’ve got to tell him: ‘Gaaas… gaaaas.’

I shout, crawl across to him, hit at him with the gas-mask case but he doesn’t notice – I do it again, and then again – he only ducks – it is one of the new recruits – I look despairingly at Kat, who has his mask on already – I tear mine out of the case, my helmet is knocked aside as I get the mask over my face, I reach the man and his gas-mask case is by my hand, so I get hold of the mask and shove it over his head – he grabs it, I let go, and with a sudden jolt I am lying in the shell hole.

The dull thud of the gas shells is mixed in with the sharp noise of the high explosives. In between the explosions a bell rings the warning, gongs and metal rattles spread the word – Gas – gas – gaas…

There is a noise as someone drops behind me, once, twice. I wipe the window of my gas-mask clear of condensation. It is Kat, Kropp and somebody else. There are four of us lying here, tensed and waiting, breathing as shallowly as we can^[106].

The first few minutes with the mask tell you whether you will live or die. Is it airtight? I know the terrible sights from the field hospital, soldiers who have been gassed, choking for days on end as they spew up their burned-out lungs, bit by bit.

I breathe carefully, with my mouth pressed against the mouthpiece. By now the gas is snaking over the ground and sinking into all the hollows. It insinuates itself into our shell hole wriggling its way in like a broad, soft jellyfish. I give Kat a nudge: it is better to crawl out and lie up on top rather than here, where the gas concentrates itself the most. But we can’t. A second hail of shellfire starts. It’s as if it is not the guns that are roaring; it’s as if the very earth is raging.

There is a crash as something black flies over and on to us. It strikes the ground right beside us: a coffin that has been blown through the air.

I see Kat move, and crawl across to him. The coffin has crashed down on to the outstretched arm of the fourth man in our shell hole. He tries to tear off his gas-mask with his other hand. Kropp gets to him just in time, twists that arm hard behind his back and holds it there.

Kat and I set about freeing the wounded arm. The coffin lid is loose and damaged, and we easily manage to wrench it free; we throw out the corpse, which flops down, and then we try to loosen the rest of the coffin.

Luckily, the man passes out, and Albert is able to help us. Now we don’t have to be so careful, and we work like mad until the coffin gives way with a sighing noise to the spades which we shove in underneath it.

It is lighter now. Kat takes a piece of the coffin lid and puts it under the shattered arm, and we wrap the bandages from all our field dressing packs^[107] around it. There isn’t anything else we can do at the moment.

My head is throbbing and buzzing in the gas-mask, it is nearly bursting. Your lungs get strained, they only have stagnant, overheated, used-up air to breathe, the veins on your temples bulge and you think you are going to suffocate —

A grey light trickles into our shell hole. Wind sweeps the cemetery. I haul myself up to the edge of the hole. Lying in front of me in the dirty light of dawn is a leg that has been torn off, with the boot on it still completely undamaged – I see it all perfectly clearly in a moment. But now, a few yards away, somebody is standing up; I clean the goggles, and because I am agitated they mist over again at once, but I stare across – the man over there isn’t wearing his gas-mask any more.

I wait for a few seconds longer – but he doesn’t collapse, he looks around cautiously and takes a few steps – the wind has dispersed the gas, the air is clear – and gasping for breath I rip my mask away from my face too, and my knees give way^[108]. The air pours into me like cold water, my eyes feel as if they could burst from my head, the wave sweeps over me and plunges me into darkness.

The shelling has stopped. I turn back to the crater and wave to the others. They scramble up and tear off their masks. We pick up the wounded man, one of us holds the arm with the splint on it. And in a group we stumble away as quickly as possible.

The cemetery has been blown to pieces. Coffins and corpses are scattered all around. They have been killed for a second time; but every corpse that was shattered saved the life of one of us.

The fence has been wrecked, the rails of the field railway^[109] on the other side have been ripped out and bent upwards, so that they point to the sky. Someone is lying on the ground in front of us. We stop. Kropp goes on alone with the wounded man.

The man on the ground is a recruit. He has blood smeared all over one hip; he is so exhausted that I reach for my flask, which has tea with rum in it. Kat holds back my hand and bends over him. ‘Where did you cop it, mate?^[110]’

He moves his eyes, too weak to answer.

Carefully we cut away his trousers. He moans. ‘It’s OK, OK, it’ll soon be better…’

If he’s been hit in the stomach then he mustn’t drink anything. He has thrown up, and that is a good sign. We expose the hip area.

It is just a pulp of torn flesh and splintered bone. The joint has been hit. This lad will never walk again.

I wet my fingers and run them across his forehead, then give him a drink. Some life comes into his eyes. It’s only now that we realize that his right arm is bleeding as well.

Kat spreads out two field dressings as wide as he can, so that they cover the wound. I look around for some cloth, so that I can tie it up loosely. We haven’t got anything, so I cut more of the wounded man’s trousers away so that I can use a piece of his underpants as a bandage. But he isn’t wearing any. I look at him more closely. It’s the blond lad from earlier on.

Meanwhile Kat has fetched a couple more field dressings from the pockets of dead soldiers, and we place them carefully on the wound. The lad is looking at us with a fixed gaze.

‘We’ll go and get a stretcher now.’

But he opens his mouth and whispers, ‘Stay here —’

Kat says, ‘We’ll be back in a minute. We’re going to get a stretcher for you.’

It is impossible to say whether he understands or not; he whimpers like a child behind us as we go: ‘Stay here —’

Kat looks all round and then whispers, ‘Wouldn’t it be best just to take a revolver and put him out of his misery?’

The lad is not likely to survive being moved, and at the very most he’ll last a couple of days. But everything he’s been through so far will be nothing compared to those few days until he dies. At the moment he is still in shock and can’t feel anything. Within an hour he’ll be a screaming mass of unbearable agonies, and the few days he still has left to live will just be an incessant raging torture. And what difference does it make to anyone whether he has to suffer them or not?

I nod. ‘You’re right, Kat. The best thing would be a bullet.’ ‘Give me a gun,’ he says, and stops walking. I can see that he is set on it^[111]. We look around – but we’re not alone any more. A small group is gathering near us, and heads are appearing out of the shell holes and trenches.

We bring a stretcher.

Kat shakes his head. ‘Such young lads —’ He says it again: ‘Such young, innocent lads…

Our losses are not as bad as might have been expected: five dead and eight wounded. It was only a short barrage. Two of our dead are lying in one of the re-opened graves; all we have to do is fill it in.

We go back. We trot along silently, in line one behind the other. The wounded are taken to the dressing station^[112]. The morning is overcast, the orderlies scurry about with tags and numbers, the wounded whimper. It starts to rain.

Within an hour we reach our truck and climb aboard. There is more room on it now than there was before.

The rain gets heavier. We open up tarpaulins and put them over our heads. The drops drum down on top of them. Streams of rain pour off the sides. The trucks splash through the holes in the road and we rock backwards and forwards, half asleep.

Two men at the front of the truck have long forked poles^[113] with them. They watch out for the telephone wires that hang down so low across the roadway that they could take your head off. The two men make sure they get them with their forked sticks and lift them over our heads. We hear them shouting, ‘Mind the wires!^[114]’ and still half asleep we bob down and then straighten up again.

The trucks roll monotonously onwards, the shouts are monotonous, the falling rain is monotonous. It falls on our heads and on the heads of the dead men up at the front of the truck, on the body of the little recruit with a wound that is far too big for his hip, it’s falling on Kemmerich’s grave, and it’s falling in our hearts.

From somewhere we hear the sound of a shell-burst. We snap to, our eyes wide open, our hands ready again to heave our bodies over the side of the truck into the ditch by the roadside.

But we don’t hear any more. Just the monotonous shouts of ‘Mind the wires!’ – we bob down – we’re half asleep again.