p him back to front-line reality. By sheer luck Paul's entire group next find themselves guarding an abandoned village and supply dump. For two glorious weeks they lose themselves in feasting sleeping, and joking. Then, again by chance, both Paul and Kropp receive leg wounds while helping to evacuate a village. During their stay in a Catholic hospital, the wonder of clean sheets soon evaporates, and Paul discovers just how many ways a man can be killed or maimed for life. The wards seem worse than the battlefield. Kropp's leg is amputated, but Paul recovers. After a short while Paul is back to animal existence at the front, except that conditions have grown even worse. Starved and short of supplies, the men are skinny and their nerves are so frayed that they are prone to snap easily. It takes only the wonder of cherry blossoms at the edge of a field to fill one man with thoughts of his farm: he deserts and is court martialed. As the summer wears on, lives are reduced to a paralyzing round of filth, mud, torn gear, dysentery, typhus, influenza, and battle. Muller, shot point blank in the stomach, gives Kemmerich's boots to Paul,the boots are sturdy and may survive them all. When Leer collapses of a hip wound, all Paul has left is his friend Katczinsky. Then even Katczinsky is wounded: his shin is shattered. Paul dodges bulletes behind the lines to an aid station. But the medics can only shake their heads. Katczinsky has died on Paul's back from a tiny splinter of shrapnel that freakishly pierced his head. The months wear on to October, and Paul is alone. Back at the front after two weeks of rest for a trace of gas poisoning, he has nothing to hope for. He is killed on a day so quiet that the army report consists of a single line: "All Quiet on the Western Front."...
