All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Found Poem

Horror of War

Promising

We went courageously

To begin the disentanglement of life and death

With pale faces

Heavy fire is falling on us

Retreating

Death is working

Machine guns rattle, rifles crack

He’s killed at sight!

His head torn off!

Breathes no more….

Hit in the back

I was mad with pain

Death- throes are stronger

Artillery opens fire

I drop down to my knees

I remain quiet

My weakness haunts me

Terror

It kills if a man thinks about it

I stand up

My hands grow cold and my flesh creeps

Low spirits

The earth sudders, it crashes, smokes, and creeps

We need more reinforcement

Comrades are dead

The fight ceases

No Man’s Land

The dead pile up in the field

Their faces have the awful expressionlessness of dead children

The night roars and flashes

The wounded

Helpless

We listen to them dying

Their life is at an end

Life is short

There was nothing

Left

Alone

The horror of war

All Quiet on the Western Front: Vocabulary

1. Reverberation

• The roar of the gun makes our lorry stagger, the reverberation rolls raging away from the rear, everything quakes.
• Reverberation: An echo
• Reverberation: noun; a reechoed sound
• As the tanks fired their cannons, the snarl from the shot caused a reverberation echo through the valley.

2. Belaboured

• We sit as though in a boiler that is being belaboured from without on all sides.
• Belaboured: Being battered around
• Belaboured: Verb; to beat severely; thrash
• The reinforced door of the church was being belaboured by a giant pillar carried by German soldiers.

3. Debauched

• *Sentence was too long, the following is a part of the sentence* Our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor- thus we stagger forward.
• Debauched: Aching; Sore
• Debauched: Adjective; unrestrained by convention or morality
• The debauched soldier was on the verge to give up on life, so he thought about standing in the open waiting to get shot.

4. Cur

• He draws up his legs, crouches back against the wall, and shows his teeth like a cur.
• Cur: An object resembling a creature that sticks their teeth out
• Cur: Noun; a despicable or cowardly person
• I think one of the soldiers in my squad is a cur because he hardly ever gets in the action of a battle.

5. Smutty

• Then Leer and Tjaden stroll up; they look at the poster and immediately the conversation becomes smutty.
• Smutty: Perverted
• Smutty: Noun; Obscenity in speech or writing
• Smutty language is common in the military; everyone talks smack to each other.

6.Dysentery

• They have dysentery; furtively many of them display the blood- stained tails of their shirts.
• Dysentery: A disease that inters with the digestive system
• Dysentery: Noun; An inflammatory disorder of the lower intestinal tract, usually caused by a bacterial, parasitic, or protozoan infection and resulting in pain, fever, and severe diarrhea, often accompanied by the passage of blood and mucus.
• Most of my squad suffers from dysentery ever since they drank water from the dark, murky stream. Every once in awhile, a groan could be heard from the latrine.

7. Idyll

• So we zealously set to work to create an idyll– an idyll of eating and sleeping of course.
• Idyll: An agenda
• Idyll: Noun; a simple descriptive or narrative piece in verse or prose
• One of the soldiers wrote an idyll to his loved one back in the states before he departed for battle.

8. Eiderdowns

• Then we furnish ourselves with blankets, and eiderdowns, luxurious soft affairs.
• Eiderdowns: A warm, thermal blanket
• Eiderdowns: Noun; The down of the eider duck, used as stuffing for quilts and pillows
• My mother sent me an eiderdown, so I could keep warm during the winter.

9. Perambulators

• On the way we meet the fleeing inhabitants trundling their goods and chattels along with them in wheelbarrows, in perambulators, and on their backs.
• Perambulators: A movable device that holds numerous items 
• Perambulators: Noun; A baby carriage
• Mothers from a village, that was being attacked, ran with their babies in perambulators.

10. Aberration

• Anyone might have known that his flight was only homesickness and a momentary aberration.
• Aberration: A black- out; fainting
• Aberration: Noun; A defect of focus, such as blurring in an image
• The smoke grenade blinded my eyes causing aberration in my vision.