Katczinsky Says It Is All To Do

The Room Shall Speak, It Must Catch Me Up And Hold Me, I Want To Feel That I Belong Here, I Want To Hearken And Know When I Go Back To The Front Line That The War Will Sink Down, Be Drowned Utterly In The Great Home-coming Tide, Know That It Will Then Be Past For Ever, And Not Gnaw Us Continually, That It Will Have None But An Outward Power Over Us...nothing Stirs; Listless And Wretched, Like A Condemned Man, I Sit There And The Past Withdraws Itself. And At The Same Time I Fear To Importune It Too Much, Because I Do Not Know What Might Happen Then. I Am A Soldier, I Must Cling To That.

We Came To Realise - First With Astonishment, Then Bitterness, And Finally With Indifference - That Intellect Apparently Wasn't The Most Important Thing...not Ideas, But The System; Not Freedom, But Drill. We Had Joined Up With Enthusiasm And With Good Will; But They Did Everything To Knock That Out Of Us.

We Lie Under The Network Of Arching Shells And Live In A Suspense Of Uncertainty. If A Shot Comes, We Can Duck, That Is All; We Neither Know Nor Can Determine Where It Will Fall." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 6

You May Turn Into An Archangel, A Fool, Or A Criminal—no One Will See It. But When A Button Is Missing—everyone Sees That.

The Miracle Has Passed Me By; It Has Touched But Not Changed Me; I Still Have The Same Name And I Know I Will Probably Bear It Until The End Of My Days; I Am No Phoenix; Resurrection Is Not For Me; I Have Tried To Fly But I Am Tumbling Like A Dazzled, Awkward Rooster Back To Earth, Back Behind The Barbed Wires.