The Road Back: A Novel (All Quiet on the Western Front, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Erich Maria Remarque, who was born in Germany, was drafted into the German army during World War I. Through the hazardous years following the war he worked at many occupations: schoolteacher, small-town drama critic, race-car driver, editor of a sports magazine. His first novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, was published in Germany in 1928. A brilliant success, selling more than a million copies, it was the first of many literary triumphs. When the Nazis came to power, Remarque left Germany for Switzerland. He rejected all attempts to persuade him to return, and as a result he lost his German citizenship, his books were burned, and his films banned. He went to the United States in 1938 and became a citizen in 1947. He later lived in Switzerland with his second wife, the actress Paulette Goddard. He died in September 1970.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

After four grueling years the Great War has finally ended. Now Ernst and the few men left from his company cannot help wondering what will become of them. The town they departed as eager young men seems colder, their homes smaller, the reasons their comrades had to die even more inexplicable.

For Ernst and his friends, the road back to peace is more treacherous than they ever imagined. Suffering food shortages, political unrest, and a broken heart, Ernst undergoes a crisis that teaches him what there is to live for -- and what he has that no one can ever take away.

Aus dem Klappentext

K

After four grueling years the Great War has finally ended. Now Ernst and the few men left from his company cannot help wondering what will become of them. The town they departed as eager young men seems colder, their homes smaller, the reasons their comrades had to die even more inexplicable.

For Ernst and his friends, the road back to peace is more treacherous than they ever imagined. Suffering food shortages, political unrest, and a broken heart, Ernst undergoes a crisis that teaches him what there is to live for--and what he has that no one can ever take away.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Part One
 
 
ROADS STRETCH FAR through the landscape, the villages lie in a grey light; trees rustle, leaves are falling, falling.
 
Along the road, step upon step, in their faded, dirty uniforms tramp the grey columns. The unshaved faces beneath the steel helmets are haggard, wasted with hunger and long peril, pinched and dwindled to the lines drawn by terror and courage and death. They trudge along in silence; silently, as they have now marched over so many a road, have sat in so many a truck, squatted in so many a dugout, crouched in so many a shell hole—without many words; so too now they trudge along this road back home into peace. Without many words.
 
Old men with beards and slim lads scarce twenty years of age, comrades without difference. Beside them their lieutenants, little more than children, yet the leaders of many a night raid. And behind them, the army of slain. Thus they tramp onward, step by step, sick, half-starving, without ammunition, in thin companies, with eyes that still fail to comprehend it: escaped out of that underworld, on the road back into life.
 
1
 
The company is marching slowly, for we are tired and have wounded with us. Little by little our group falls behind. The country is hilly, and when the road climbs we can see from the summit the last of our own troops withdrawing before us, and behind us the dense, endless columns that follow after. They are Americans. They pour on through the avenues of trees like a broad river and the restless glitter of their weapons plays over them. But around them lie the quiet fields, and the tree tops in their autumnal colours tower solemn and unconcerned above the oncoming flood.
 
We stopped for the night in a little village. Behind the houses in which we billeted flows a stream lined with willows. A narrow path runs beside it. One behind another in a long file we follow it. Kosole is in front. Behind him runs Wolf, the company mascot, and sniffs at his haversack.
 
Suddenly at the crossroad, where the path opens into the high road, Ferdinand springs back.
 
“Look out!”
 
On the instant our rifles are up and we scatter. Kosole crouches in the ditch by the roadside, ready to fire; Jupp and Trosske duck and spy out from behind a clump of elders; Willy Homeyer tugs at his hand-grenade belt; even our wounded are ready for fight.
 
Along the road are coming a few Americans. They are laughing and talking together. It is an advance patrol that has overtaken us. Adolf Bethke alone has remained unperturbed. He advances calmly a few paces clear of the cover. Kosole gets up again. The rest of us recover ourselves also, and embarrassed and sheepish, readjust our belts and our rifle slings—for, of course, fighting has ceased some days now.
 
At sight of us the Americans halt suddenly. Their talk stops. Slowly they approach. We retire against a shed to cover our backs, and wait. The wounded men we place in the middle.
 
After a minute’s silence an American, tall as a tree, steps out from the group, stands before us and beckoning, greets us.
 
“Hello, Kamerad!”
 
Adolf Bethke raises his hand in like manner. “Kamerad!” The tension relaxes. The Americans advance. A moment later and we are surrounded by them. Hitherto we have seen them so closely only when they were either prisoners or dead.
 
It is a strange moment. We gaze at them in silence. They stand about us in a semicircle, fine, powerful fellows; clearly they have always had plenty to eat. They are all young; not one of them is nearly so old as Adolf Bethke or Ferdinand Kosole—and they are not our oldest by a long chalk. On the other hand none is so young as Albert Trosske or Karl Bröger—and they are by no means the youngest of us.
 
They are wearing new uniforms and greatcoats; their boots are water-tight and fit well; their rifles are good and their pouches full of ammunition. They are all fresh and unused.
 
Compared to these fellows we are a perfect band of robbers. Our uniforms are bleached with the mud of years, with the rains of the Argonne, the chalk of Champagne, the bog waters of Flanders; our greatcoats ragged and torn by barbed wire, shell splinters and shrapnel, cobbled with crude stitches, stiff with clay and in some instances even with blood; our boots broken, our rifles worn out, our ammunition almost at an end; we are all of us dirty, all alike gone to wrack, all weary. The war has passed over us like a steam roller.
 
 
Yet more troops gather around us. The square is filled with curious eyes.
 
We stand in a corner grouped about our wounded men—not because we are afraid, but because we belong together. The Americans nudge one another and point at our old, worn-out gear. One of them offers Breyer a piece of white bread, but though hunger is apparent in his eyes, he does not take it.
 
With a sudden ejaculation one of them points to the bandages on our wounded. These are of crêpe paper, made fast with pack thread. They all have a look, then retire and whisper together. Their friendly faces are full of sympathy as they see that we have not even muslin bandages.
 
The man who first addressed us now puts a hand on Bethke’s shoulder. “Deutsche—gute Soldat,” he says, “brave Soldat.”
 
The others nod emphatically.
 
We make no answer. We are not yet able to answer. —The last weeks have tried us bitterly. We had to return again and again to the battle, losing our men to no purpose, yet we made no protest; we did as we have always done; and at the end our company had thirty-two men left of two hundred. —So we came out from it thinking no more, feeling no more than that we had faithfully done what had been laid upon us to do.
 
But now, under the pitying eyes of these Americans, we perceive how much in vain it has all been. The sight of their interminable, well-equipped columns reveals to us against what hopeless odds in man power and material we made our stand.
 
We bite our lips and look at each other. Bethke withdraws his shoulder from under the American’s hand; Kosole stares ahead into vacancy; Ludwig Breyer draws himself up—we grip our rifles more firmly; we brace our knees, our eyes become harder and our gaze does not falter. We look back once more over the country whence we have come; our faces become tight with suppressed emotion and once again the searing memory passes through us: all we have done, all we have suffered, and all that we have left behind.
 
We do not know what is the matter with us; but if a bitter word were now loosed against us, it would sting us to fury, and whether we wanted to or not we would burst forward, wild and breathless, mad and lost, to fight—in spite of everything, to fight again.
 
 
A thick-set sergeant with a ruddy face elbows his way toward us. Over Kosole, who stands nearest him, he pours a flood of German words. Ferdinand winces, it so astonishes him.
 
“He talks just the same as we do!” he says to Bethke in amazement; “what do you make of that, now?”
 
The fellow speaks German better and more fluently even than Kosole himself. He explains that he was in Dresden before the war, and had many friends there.
 
“In Dresden?” asks Kosole, even more staggered. “Why, I was there once myself for a couple of years——”
 
The sergeant smiles as though that identified him once and for all. He names the street where he had lived.
 
“Not five minutes from...