Verdun

All Quiet From Fort Vaux

We are at rest ten miles from the front. Yesterday we where relieved and full of beef and carrots. Each man has a mess kit full with tea and bread. This is what puts a man in quite a fine trim. We have had not such pleasure like this for a long time. Verie and Müller have produced three washbins to wiping our mess kits. In Verie this is voracity, in Müller it is foresight. Where Müller puts it as all a mystery, for he and will always be as thin as a stick. What's more important still is the issue on the ration on smokes. Ten cigars,twenty cigarettes, and two quids of chew per soldier; now that is decent. I traded my chewing tobacco for his cigars, which means I have twenty all together. That's enough for two days. The Russian is not so generous. It is only a miscalculation to thank for it. Twelve days ago we had to go up and relieve the front line. It was fairly quiet in our sector, so the quatermaster who had usually remained in the rear had requisitioned the usual amount of rations and provided the full company for fifty men. Sadly on the last day German artillery opened up on us and we came back only twenty strong. Verie is right when he says "It would not be such a bad war if one could get some sleep." It was at morning when we crawled out of our little mud huts we built in the trenches and went to the cook-house, smelling greasy and nourishing. At the head of course were the hungriest, Albert Kropp, the best and clearest thinker amoung us and only a lance-corporal. Kantirek said we were on the threshold of life. And so it seems. I have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important to us... and good decent boots are scarce. Once it was different. When we went to the district commandant to enlist, we were a class of twenty young men. We had no definite for our future. Our thoughts of a career and occupation were yet unpractical for a scheme of life. All we had were ideas to join the French army, beautiful girlfriends, and a almost romantic character. We though the war would be easy, how wrong we were.