Trench Assault and Capture of Supplies

After three days of relentless shelling that reduced their trench to a shattered line of craters and buried some of their dug-outs, the men of the Second Company were reduced to a state of near-animal endurance. The bombardment had been so intense that no food could be brought up; even Stanislaus Katczinsky, the master scrounger, failed to get through. The soldiers chewed every mouthful three times as long, nibbled at crusts, and regretted the bread they had earlier thrown to the rats. Water was short, and the strain drove one recruit into a fit of claustrophobia, forcing Paul and Kat to subdue him physically. When the shelling suddenly lifted and a heavy barrage began falling behind them, the attack they had been expecting finally came.

The Counter-Attack and the Frenzy of Survival

The moment the barrage lifted, the men seized hand-grenades, pitched them out in front of the dug-out, and jumped after them. Steel helmets appeared on all sides from the ruined trench, and a machine-gun was already in position fifty yards away, barking. The wire entanglements were torn to pieces but still offered some obstacle. The storm-troops came on—French soldiers with smooth, distorted faces. Haie Westhus and Albert Kropp began throwing hand-grenades as fast as they could, others passed them with the strings already pulled. Haie threw seventy-five yards, Kropp sixty; the distance was critical. A whole line of the enemy went down before the machine-guns, then stoppages occurred and the French came nearer. Paul saw one man fall into a wire cradle, his hands remaining suspended as though praying after his body dropped away. When three faces rose from the ground in front of him, one with a dark pointed beard and eyes that fastened on him, Paul raised his hand but could not throw into those strange eyes; for one moment the whole slaughter whirled like a circus around him, and only those two eyes were motionless. Then the head rose, a hand moved, and Paul's hand-grenade flew through the air and into him.

The Pursuit and the Capture of the Enemy Trench

The company made for the rear, pulling wire cradles into the trench and leaving bombs behind with the strings pulled to ensure a fiery retreat. The machine-guns were already firing from the next position. The men had become wild beasts, not fighting but defending themselves against annihilation. They felt a mad anger—no longer lying helpless on the scaffold, they could destroy and kill to save themselves and be revenged. Crouching like cats, they ran on, overwhelmed by a wave that multiplied their strength with fear and madness and greed of life. The forward trenches were blown to pieces, annihilated—only broken bits of trenches, holes linked by cracks, nests of craters. By noon the sun blazed hotly, sweat stung in their eyes, and they wiped it off on their sleeves, often with blood. They reached a trench in somewhat better condition, manned and ready for the counter-attack. Their guns opened in full blast and cut off the enemy attack. The fire lifted a hundred yards and they broke forward. Beside Paul a lance-corporal had his head torn off and ran a few steps more while blood spouted from his neck like a fountain. They drove the French back, arriving once again at their shattered trench and passing beyond it. In the pursuit they reached the enemy line so close on the heels of the retreating French that they suffered few casualties. A machine-gun barked but was silenced with a bomb. Kat smashed the face of one of the unwounded machine-gunners with the butt of his rifle; they bayoneted the others before they could get out their bombs. Then, thirstily, they drank the water the French had for cooling the gun. Everywhere wire-cutters snapped, planks were thrown across the entanglements, and they jumped through the narrow entrances into the trenches. Haie struck his spade into the neck of a gigantic Frenchman and threw the first hand-grenade; they ducked behind a breastwork, then the straight bit of trench ahead was empty. The next throw whizzed obliquely over the corner and cleared a passage; as they ran past they tossed handfuls down into the dug-outs, the earth shuddered, crashed, smoked, and groaned, and they stumbled over slippery lumps of flesh and yielding bodies. Paul fell into an open belly on which lay a clean, new officer's cap.

The Looting and the Significance of Provisions

The fight ceased and they lost touch with the enemy. Knowing they could not stay long but must retire under cover of their own artillery, they dived into the nearest dug-outs and with the utmost haste seized whatever provisions they could see, especially tins of corned beef and butter. They got back pretty well; there was no further attack. They lay for an hour panting and resting before anyone spoke, so completely played out that in spite of great hunger they did not think of the provisions. Then gradually they became something like men again. The corned beef they captured was famous along the whole front; occasionally it had been the chief reason for a flying raid, for their own nourishment was generally very bad and they had a constant hunger. They bagged five tins altogether. Haie scored a thin loaf of white French bread, a bit bloody at one corner but that could be cut off. Tjaden captured two water-bottles full of cognac, which they passed round. Enough to eat was just as valuable as a good dug-out; it could save their lives, and that was the reason they were so greedy for it. The evening benediction began, night came, and out of the craters rose the mists. Paul, on sentry, stared into the darkness. His strength was exhausted as always after an attack, and it was hard for him to be alone with his thoughts. They were not properly thoughts but memories that in his weakness haunted him and strangely moved him—a summer evening in the cathedral cloister, the poplar avenue by the stream behind his town. These memories were completely calm, soundless apparitions that spoke to him without any word, and it was the alarm of their silence that forced him to lay hold of his sleeve and his rifle lest he should abandon himself to the liberation and allurement in which his body would dilate and gently pass away into the still forces that lay behind these things. The stillness of these memories did not awaken desire so much as sorrow—a vast, inapprehensible melancholy. They were past, they belonged to another world that was gone from them. Here in the trenches they were completely lost; they arose no more. The men were dead and those scenes stood remote on the horizon, a mysterious reflection, an apparition that haunted them, that they feared and loved without hope.