All Quiet

All Quiet on the Western Front – Chapter 4

Summary

The Second Company is assigned to the task of laying wire at the front. Everyone crowds into trucks. The drivers do not risk using light, so the trucks often lurch when they hit deep holes in the road. No one minds that they are often nearly thrown from them. A broken bone means they will not have to fight until it mends again. They pass a house, and Paul detects the cackle of geese. He and Kat agree to make a surreptitious visit later.

The sound of gunfire and shells fills the air. The veteran fighters are not gripped with fear like the new recruits. Kat explains to the recruits how to distinguish which guns are firing by listening to the blasts. He announces that he senses there will be a bombardment later in the night. The English batteries have begun firing an hour earlier than usual. The experienced soldiers change “imperceptibly.” In the roar of guns and the whistling of shells, their senses sharpen.

Paul regards the front as a “mysterious whirlpool.” Already, he feels its pull. For the soldier, the earth takes on a new significance. He buries his body in it for shelter. It receives him every time he throws himself down in a fold, furrow, or hollow. Often, it takes him in forever. At the front, a man’s ancient animal instincts awaken. They are a saving grace for many men who obey them without hesitation. Often, a man drops to the ground just in time to avoid a shell he did not even hear coming. On the front, men transform from soldiers to “human animals.”

The soldiers carry wire and iron rods to the front. Shortly before they arrive, they extinguish cigarettes and pipes. After they lay the wire, they try to sleep until the trucks arrive to drive them back. Kat’s prediction about the bombardment is correct. Everyone scrambles for cover while the shells land around them. Paul attempts to replace a terrified recruit’s helmet on his head, but the boy cuddles under his arm. Paul places it on his behind to protect it from shell fragments. After the shelling lessens, the recruit comes to and notices with embarrassment that he has defecated in his pants. Paul explains that many soldiers experience this problem at first. He instructs the boy to remove his underpants and throw them away.

They hear the wrenching sounds of wounded horses. Detering is particularly horrified because he is a farmer and he loves horses. After the wounded men are gathered, those in charge of the job shoot the wounded animals. Detering declares with disgust that using horses in war is the “vilest baseness.”

As the trucks drive them back, Kat becomes restless. A flurry of bombs lands around them. The men take cover in a nearby graveyard. Paul crawls under an uncovered coffin for protection. Kat shakes him from behind to tell him to put his gas mask on. After he dons his mask, Paul helps a new recruit don his mask. Afterwards, he dives into a hole left by an exploding shell. Shells seldom hit the same place twice. Kat and Kropp join him. Paul takes a breath on the valve, hoping that the mask is air tight. Sometimes they are not, and the victims die, coughing up blood clots from their burned lungs.

Later, Paul climbs out and notes that one man not wearing his mask does not collapse. He tears his mask off and gulps fresh air. The shelling has stopped. Paul notices a recruit lying on the ground with his thigh a mass of flesh and bone splinters at the joint. It is the recruit who defecated in his pants earlier. Kat and Paul know that he will not survive his wounds. Kat whispers that it will be more merciful to end his life with a gunshot before the agony of his wound begins to torment him. They are not able to complete their plan because other people are emerging from their holes.

Commentary

During The Great War, laying barbed wire was one of the most unpopular jobs on both sides. It was also an extremely dangerous job. After a period of massive bombing, soldiers had to return and lay wire where it had been blown away. The job had to be conducted at night, and the darker it was, the better. If they were to lay the wire in daylight, they would be picked off by snipers or bombed promptly by the other side.

Even the drivers of the trucks transporting the Second Company to the front dare not turn on their headlights for fear of attracting attention. Soldiers could easily suffer a fatal accident during such moments because the roads are so treacherous. The work itself is heavy and unpleasant, and it is made all the more difficult by the darkness. The soldier does not even have the protection of the trenches and a lit cigarette, or flash of light from an exploding shell, is enough to give away their position to the enemy.

Even though the darkness is the soldier’s chief protection, it also gives rise to the psychological torment of not being able to see the enemy. A soldier can never be sure a sniper does not have a gun trained on him. He can never be sure that a flash of light has not given his position away. The only thing on which he can rely is pure animal instinct, throwing himself to the earth when he senses danger. Paul’s description of the soldier’s relationship with the earth is full of the metaphors of sexual acts and the child’s relationship with its mother. The earth is a dense symbol representing all the archetypal human relations: desire, love, need, and even death. It is shelter that saves his life as well as the final resting place for his dead body.

Paul’s description of the experienced soldier’s reaction to the front strips the romanticism out of the war experience. He does not speak of the honor and glory of fighting for one’s country. The soldier does not really fight for his country on the front. He fights for his life. He relies on animal instinct to save him from bullets and bombs, and he concentrates on acquiring food, clothing, and shelter, not on some abstract ideal of patriotic duty to the fatherland.

The recruit’s first trip to the front is a test of fire. If he cannot immediately shed his illusions about the war, and the useless elaborate drills of the training camp, he either goes mad or dies. His training camp can do nothing to prepare him for the front. The real training begins with gaining experience on the front. He must learn to cope with constant fear, uncertainty, bombardment, and violence by becoming a “human animal.”

World War I soldiers had to face the possibility of new weapons for which they are not prepared. Poison gas was one of those weapons in The Great War. Germany was the first side to use poison gas in the war. The leaders of Germany claimed that France had used chemical weapons first, so they felt justified in breaking the terms of the Hague Convention. The soldiers on the other side were utterly unprepared for the chlorine gas that crept towards their trenches. England and her allies quickly developed gas masks for it, but only after a number of painful, agonizing deaths.

Afterwards, chemists on both sides researched furiously to find various gases and methods of delivery. Often the winds blew the gas back into their own trenches. By the end of the war, mustard gas, chlorine gas, and phosgene were being used. The effects on the victim were utterly unbelievable. Some fell where they lay and turned black. Mustard gas was odorless, and it did not take effect for twelve hours. Huge blisters rose on the victim’s skin, and he often suffered blindness. Chlorine gas destroyed the respiratory systems of many victims. Those who received a lethal dose not strong enough to kill them faced a slow, agonizing death, coughing up blood clots from their damaged lungs while gasping for breath.

In the early days of poison gas, there was a delay between its introduction and the development of a mask to protect soldiers against it. Before then, they could do nothing other than flee the poisonous cloud. Snipers from the other side could pick them off as they fled the trenches. Because gas was a new weapon, soldiers learned how to avoid injury and death only through experience. Masks were only part of this endeavor. They learned that gas lingered in the shell holes and trenches longer only after seeing others make the mistake of removing their masks too soon.

Watch the

movie.