Apparently Himmelstoss doesn’t quite know what to do. He would like most to set us all on the run again. But he seems to have learned already that frontline isn’t a parade ground.
At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood—nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn’t get jammed, as it does in the ribs.
[W]hen I hear the word ‘peace-time,’ it goes to my head: and if it really came, I think I would do some unimaginable thing—something, you know, that it’s worth having lain here in the muck for. But I can’t even imagine anything.