Summary
Paul, Tjaden, Müller, Kropp, Detering, and Kat have to
guard a supply dump in an abandoned village. They use a concrete
shelter for a dugout and take advantage of the opportunity to eat
and sleep as much as they can. They take a large mahogany bed, mattresses,
and blankets into their dugout because they rarely have access to
such luxuries. They collect eggs and butter, and they have the luck
to find two suckling pigs. They collect fresh vegetables and cook
a grand dinner in a well-outfitted kitchen near the dugout. Paul
makes pancakes while the others roast the pigs.
Unfortunately, the enemy sees the smoke rising from the
chimney and bombs the house. As the attack begins, the men gather
the food and make a dash for the dugout. Paul finishes cooking the
pancakes while the bombs fall around him. Once he finishes, he grabs
the plate of pancakes and manages to get to the dugout without losing
a single one. The meal lasts four hours. Afterward, the men smoke cigars
and cigarettes from the supply dump. They drink coffee and begin
eating again before they end the night with cognac. They even feed
a stray cat. The richness of the meal after such long deprivation causes
them to suffer bouts of diarrhea all night.
For three weeks, the men live a “charmed life” before
they are moved again. They take the bed, two armchairs, and the
cat with them. While they are evacuating another village, Kropp
and Paul are wounded by a falling shell. They find an ambulance
wagon after struggling out of the zone of the shelling. Kropp has
been wounded very close to his knee. He resolves to commit suicide
if they amputate his leg. Paul's leg is broken and his arm is wounded.
He and Kropp travel to the hospital in the same train car after
bribing a sergeant-major with cigars.
Kropp develops a fever and must stop at the Catholic hospital nearby.
Paul fakes an illness to go with him. Kropp's fever does not improve,
so his leg has to be amputated from the thigh. Men die daily at
the hospital. The amazing array of maiming wounds shows Paul that
a hospital is the best place to learn what war is about. He wonders
what will happen to his generation after the war.
Lewandowski, a forty-year-old soldier, is recuperating
from a bad abdominal injury. He is excited that his wife is coming
to visit him with the child she bore after he left to fight two
years before. He wants to take his wife somewhere private, because
he has not slept with her for two years. But before she arrives,
he develops a fever, so he is confined to bed. When she arrives,
she is nervous. Lewandowski explains what he wants, and she blushes
furiously. The other patients tell her that social niceties can
be dispensed with during wartime. Two men guard the door in case
a doctor or one of the nuns arrives to check on a patient. Kropp
holds the child and the other patients play cards and chat loudly
with their backs to the couple while the couple makes love in Lewandowski's
bed. The plan is carried off without a problem. Lewandowski's wife
shares the food that she brought for her husband with the other
patients.
Paul heals well. The hospital begins using paper bandages because
the cloth ones have become scarce. Kropp's leg heals, but he is
more solemn and less talkative than he used to be. Paul thinks that Kropp
would have killed himself if he were not in a room with other patients.
Paul receives leave to go home and finish healing. When his time
at home is done, parting from his mother is even harder than the
last time. She is weaker than before.
Analysis
Compared to the grim tone of the preceding chapters, the
scenes in the evacuated village are full of a certain bitter comedy.
Paul and his friends make use of the opportunity to celebrate and
live a charmed life because the chances to relax and become human
are so few and far between. While Paul's decision to stay and finish
his pancakes while bombs are falling around the kitchen seems insane,
there is an appropriately demented logic to it: pancakes are his
favorite dish, and he might well die the next day and thus never
have them again.
There is, of course, a dark side to this scene. Paul and
his friends are so used to being bombed and shot at that they can
actually maintain the nerve to protect their meal during the bombardment.
Moreover, they are so starved and hungry for real food that they
are actually willing to risk their lives for it. At the same time,
their antics while guarding the supply dump provide some hope. Remarque seems
to imply that despite the ravages of war, small elements of humanity
and human folly can survive the trenches.
The ride in the train with Kropp is also full of grim
humor. Despite the dirtiness and coarseness of life in the trenches,
Paul still suffers from a boyish modesty in his reluctance to tell
one of the nurses that he needs to go to the bathroom. He doesn't
want to lie in the bunks because the sheets are so clean and he
is so dirty. In this way, Remarque demonstrates that though the
war has in many ways destroyed Paul's innocence, Paul still retains
a vestige of modesty in unfamiliar settings. The hospital scene
also contains moments when Paul's boyish innocence shows signs of
surviving. He throws a bottle at the door in order to force the
nuns to shut it when they pray, but another man takes the blame
because he has a medical condition that induces irrational, impetuous
outbursts. Paul and the other patients react with glee when they
discover this condition, because they know that they can commit
all sorts of mischief.
The rest of the chapter continues to explore the extent
to which humanity can survive the horrors of war. Lewandowski's
feverish anticipation of his wife's visit demonstrates that human
concerns can indeed weather the trenches. Moreover, the help that
he gets in carrying out his plan shows the extraordinary level of
familiarity and intimacy that soldiers share with one another, revealing
the intense comradeship and understanding among the soldiers.
Another sign in this chapter of the brutality
of war is the fact that the hospital is filled with men suffering
from permanently disfiguring injuries. There are wards for soldiers
suffering from poison gas injuries, amputations, blindness, and
various other wounds. The hospital is a museum of the vast array
of maiming and lethal injuries to which the human body is subject
in modern warfare. The most succinct and shocking evidence of the
human costs of war can be seen there. Remarque has Paul think that
anyone who wants to learn about the war should visit a hospital.
Paul is confident that such an experience would be a far better
way to understand the actual meaning of war than to listen to idealistic
rhetoric about patriotism and honor.
