All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque [0]
With searing attention to every small moment of terror and tyranny, of filth and meanness, of savagery and tenderness, of cowardice and grandeur, Erich Maria Remarque records the experiences of a group of bewildered young German soldiers fighting and suffering through the barbaric chaos of those last desperate days of the First World War.
The power of this magnificent novel lies in its terrible authenticity, for Remarque was forced to serve as a soldier in the German army and actually lived through the hell he describes so vividly in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT.
"The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm and sure."
-New York Times Book Review
Pictured on the cover:
Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine, stars of
"All Quiet on the Western Front,"
now a CBS Television Presentation
on the "Hallmark Hall of Fame."
ERICH MARIA REMARQUE
All Quiet
on the
Western Front
Translated from the German by
A. W. WHEEN
FAWCETT CREST • NEW YORK
A Fawcett Crest Book
Published by Ballantine Books
"Im Westen Nichts Neues," copyright 1928 by Ullstein A. O.; Copyright renewed 1956 by Erich Maria Remarque
"All Quiet On The Western Front," copyright 1929, 1930 by Little, Brown and Company; copyright renewed 1957, 1958 by Erich Maria Remarque
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
All characters in this book are are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
ISBN 0-449-20249-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Fawcett Crest Edition: April 1958 New Fawcett Crest Edition: July 1975
First Ballantine Books Edition: August 1982 Seventh Printing: August 1984
This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.
ONE
Weare at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans. We are satisfied and at peace. Each man has another mess-tin full for the evening; and, what is more, there is a double ration of sausage and bread. That puts a man in fine trim. We have not had such luck as this for a long time. The cook with his carroty head is begging us to eat; he beckons with his ladle to every one that passes, and spoons him out a great dollop. He does not see how he can empty his stew-pot in time for coffee. Tjaden and Müller have produced two washbasins and had them filled up to the brim as a reserve. In Tjaden this is voracity, in Müller it is foresight. Where Tjaden puts it all is a mystery, for he is and always will be as thin as a rake. What's more important still is the issue of a double ration of smokes. Ten cigars, twenty cigarettes, and two quids of chew per man; now that is decent. I have exchanged my chewing tobacco with Katczinsky for his cigarettes, which means I have forty altogether. That's enough for a day.
It is true we have no right to this windfall. The Prussian is not so generous. We have only a miscalculation to thank for it.
Fourteen days ago we had to go up and relieve the front line. It was fairly quiet on our sector, so the quartermaster who remained in the rear had requisitioned the usual quantity of rations and provided for the full company of one hundred and fifty men. But on the last day an astonishing number of English heavies opened up on us with high-explosive, drumming ceaselessly on our position, so that we suffered severely and came back only eighty