Читать книгу All Quiet on the Western Front / На Западном фронте без перемен. Книга для чтения на английском языке онлайн | страница 41

A grey light trickles into our shell hole. Wind sweeps the cemetery. I haul myself up to the edge of the hole. Lying in front of me in the dirty light of dawn is a leg that has been torn off, with the boot on it still completely undamaged – I see it all perfectly clearly in a moment. But now, a few yards away, somebody is standing up; I clean the goggles, and because I am agitated they mist over again at once, but I stare across – the man over there isn’t wearing his gas-mask any more.

I wait for a few seconds longer – but he doesn’t collapse, he looks around cautiously and takes a few steps – the wind has dispersed the gas, the air is clear – and gasping for breath I rip my mask away from my face too, and my knees give way[108]. The air pours into me like cold water, my eyes feel as if they could burst from my head, the wave sweeps over me and plunges me into darkness.

The shelling has stopped. I turn back to the crater and wave to the others. They scramble up and tear off their masks. We pick up the wounded man, one of us holds the arm with the splint on it. And in a group we stumble away as quickly as possible.

The cemetery has been blown to pieces. Coffins and corpses are scattered all around. They have been killed for a second time; but every corpse that was shattered saved the life of one of us.

The fence has been wrecked, the rails of the field railway[109] on the other side have been ripped out and bent upwards, so that they point to the sky. Someone is lying on the ground in front of us. We stop. Kropp goes on alone with the wounded man.

The man on the ground is a recruit. He has blood smeared all over one hip; he is so exhausted that I reach for my flask, which has tea with rum in it. Kat holds back my hand and bends over him. ‘Where did you cop it, mate?[110]’

He moves his eyes, too weak to answer.

Carefully we cut away his trousers. He moans. ‘It’s OK, OK, it’ll soon be better…’

If he’s been hit in the stomach then he mustn’t drink anything. He has thrown up, and that is a good sign. We expose the hip area.