would fit me perfectly. In these boots I get blister after blister. Do you think he will last till to-morrow after drill? If he passes out in the night, we know where the boots———”
Kropp returns. “Do you think———?” he asks.
“Done for,” says Müller emphatically.
We go back to the huts. I think of the letter that I must write to-morrow to Kemmerich’s mother. I am freezing. I could do with a tot of rum. Müller pulls up some grass and chews it. Suddenly little Kropp throws his cigarette away, stamps on it savagely, and looking round him with a broken and distracted face, stammers: “Damned swine, the damned swine!”
We walk on for a long time. Kropp has calmed himself; we understand: he sees red, out here every man gets like that sometime.
“What has Kantorek written to you?” Müller asks him.
He laughs. “We are the Iron Youth.”
We all three smile bitterly. Kropp rails: he is glad that he can speak.
Yes, that’s the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth. Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk.
17
