You May Turn Into An Archangel, A

We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces.

This Book Is To Be Neither An Accusation Nor A Confession, And Least Of All An Adventure, For Death Is Not An Adventure To Those Who Stand Face To Face With It. It Will Try Simply To Tell Of A Generation Of Men Who, Even Though They May Have Escaped Shells, Were Destroyed By The War.

Do I Walk? Have I Feet Still? I Raise My Eyes, I Let Them Move Round, And Turn Myself With Them, One Circle, One Circle, And I Stand In The Midst. All Is As Usual. Only The Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky Has Died. Then I Know Nothing More.

Good Or Ill, Life Is Life; You Only Realize That When You Have To Risk It.

It Is Just As Much A Matter Of Chance That I Am Still Alive As That I Might Have Been Hit. In A Bomb-proof Dug-out I May Be Smashed To Atoms And In The Open May Survive Ten Hour's Bombardment Unscratched. No Soldier Outlives A Thousand Chances. But Every Soldier Believes In Chance And Trusts His Luck.