Last week’s Uni­ver­si­ty Chal­lenge asked which lit­er­ary work opens with these lines: “We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yes­ter­day we were relieved, and now our bel­lies are full of bul­ly beef and beans”. Like a shot, I metaphor­i­cal­ly spat out my corn­flakes in a gar­bled attempt to get my answer out before the braini­acs on the quiz show – “err, err, I know this…orl-quiet-onza-western-front…”! I had recog­nised the line due to hav­ing only just read the book, giv­ing me one of those serendip­i­tous­ly rare advan­tages in TV’s tough­est quiz.

All Qui­et on the West­ern Front (in the orig­i­nal Ger­man, Im West­en nichts Neues, lit­er­al­ly “In the West, noth­ing new”) is a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el by Erich Maria Remar­que, drawn from his expe­ri­ences as a Ger­man vet­er­an of World War I. The book is a first-per­son, present-tense por­tray­al of life in the Ger­man trench­es in the Great War, a sto­ry of extreme phys­i­cal and men­tal trau­ma, punc­tu­at­ed by bore­dom and ennui. The nar­ra­tor, Paul, has come to the trench­es straight from school — remind­ing us of the young age of these lads — and he is accom­pa­nied by sev­er­al class­mates, all spurred on by their teacher to enlist and none of whom will return home.

It is right­ly con­sid­ered to be one of the great­est war nov­els of all time, and it comes as no sur­prise to learn that it was one of the books banned and burned by Nazi Ger­many in the 1930s (who weren’t keen on the sub­ver­sive “war is hell and real­ly isn’t worth it” tone of the book). It has been trans­lat­ed to the big screen on three occa­sions, most recent­ly, — and suc­cess­ful­ly — by Edward Berg­er’s 2022 adap­ta­tion, which won four Acad­e­my Awards.

When the nov­el isn’t focused on the night­mare of trench war­fare, we learn of life dur­ing the “qui­et” times in between action on the front line, marked in ran­dom order by bore­dom, black humour, cama­raderie, and obses­sion with find­ing food to sup­ple­ment their mea­gre rations. The excerpt I have cho­sen below describes one such illic­it mis­sion by Paul and his mate Kat to steal a goose from reg­i­men­tal head­quar­ters. This theme of hard-won sus­te­nance, which prob­a­bly only those who have expe­ri­enced gen­uine hunger can tru­ly appre­ci­ate, is exquis­ite­ly described. It has an air of com­e­dy caper about it, but ends with the sub­lime sat­is­fac­tion of sati­ety, a rare moment of calm before the inevitable return to real­i­ty.

Kat hoists me up. I rest my foot in his hands and climb over the wall.

Kat keeps watch below.

I wait a few moments to accus­tom my eyes to the dark­ness. Then I recog­nise the shed. Soft­ly I steal across, lift the peg, pull it out and open the door.

I dis­tin­guish two white patch­es. Two geese, that’s bad: if I grab one the oth­er will cack­le. Well, both of them–if I’m quick, it can be done.

I make a jump. I catch hold of one and the next instant the sec­ond. Like a mad­man I bash their heads against the wall to stun them. But I haven’t quite enough weight. The beasts cack­le and strike out with their feet and wings. I fight des­per­ate­ly, but Lord! what a kick a goose has! They strug­gle and I stag­ger about. In the dark these white patch­es are ter­ri­fy­ing. My arms have grown wings and I’m almost afraid of going up into the sky, as though I held a cou­ple of cap­tive bal­loons in my fists.

Then the row begins; one of them gets his breath and goes off like an alarm clock. Before I can do any­thing, some­thing comes in from out­side; I feel a blow, lie out­stretched on the floor, and hear awful growls. A dog. I steal a glance to the side, he makes a snap at my throat. I lie still and tuck my chin into my col­lar.

It’s a bull­dog. After an eter­ni­ty he with­draws his head and sits down beside me. But if I make the least move­ment he growls. I con­sid­er. The only thing to do is to get hold of my small revolver, and that too before any­one arrives. Inch by inch I move my hand toward it.

I have the feel­ing that it lasts an hour. The slight­est move­ment and then an awful growl; I lie still, then try again. When at last I have the revolver my hand starts to trem­ble. I press it against the ground and say over to myself: Jerk the revolver up, fire before he has a chance to grab, and then jump up.

Slow­ly I take a deep breath and become calmer. Then I hold my breath, whip up the revolver, it cracks, the dog leaps howl­ing to one side, I make for the door of the shed and fall head over heels over one of the scut­ter­ing geese.

At full speed I seize it again, and with a swing toss it over the wall and clam­ber up. No soon­er am I on top than the dog is up again as live­ly as ever and springs at me. Quick­ly I let myself drop. Ten paces away stands Kat with the goose under his arm. As soon as he sees me we run.

At last we can take a breather. The goose is dead, Kat saw to that in a moment. We intend to roast it at once so that nobody will be any wis­er. I fetch a dix­ie and wood from the hut and we crawl into a small desert­ed lean-to which we use for such pur­pos­es. The sin­gle win­dow space is heav­i­ly cur­tained. There is a sort of hearth, an iron plate set on some bricks. We kin­dle a fire.

Kat plucks and cleans the goose. We put the feath­ers care­ful­ly to one side. We intend to make two cush­ions out of them with the inscrip­tion: “Sleep soft under shell-fire.” The sound of the gun­fire from the front pen­e­trates into our refuge. The glow of the fire lights up our faces, shad­ows dance on the wall. Some­times a heavy crash and the lean-to shiv­ers. Aero­plane bombs. Once we hear a sti­fled cry. A hut must have been hit.

Aero­planes drone; the tack-tack of machine guns breaks out. But no light that could be observed shows from us. We sit oppo­site one anoth­er, Kat and I, two sol­diers in shab­by coats, cook­ing a goose in the mid­dle of the night. We don’t talk much, but I believe we have a more com­plete com­mu­nion with one anoth­er than even lovers have.

We are two men, two minute sparks of life; out­side is the night and the cir­cle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouch­ing in dan­ger, the grease drips from our hands, in our hearts we are close to one anoth­er, and the hour is like the room: flecked over with the lights and shad­ows of our feel­ings cast by a qui­et fire. What does he know of me or I of him? for­mer­ly we should not have had a sin­gle thought in common–now we sit with a goose between us and feel in uni­son, are so inti­mate that we do not even speak.

It takes a long time to roast a goose, even when it is young and fat. So we take turns. One bastes it while the oth­er lies down and sleeps. A grand smell grad­u­al­ly fills the hut.

Then he says: “It’s done.”

“Yes, Kat.”

I stir myself. In the mid­dle of the room shines the brown goose. We take out our col­lapsi­ble forks and our pock­et-knives and each cuts off a leg. With it we have army bread dipped in gravy. We eat slow­ly and with gus­to.

“How does it taste, Kat?”

“Good! And yours?”

“Good, Kat.”

We are broth­ers and press on one anoth­er the choic­est pieces. After­wards I smoke a cig­a­rette and Kat a cig­ar. There is still a lot left.