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Walter Kettler was seventeen when his father made the decision to send him to war before he was drafted. His older brother Gustav was already sent early in 1916 and they’d gotten the notification of his death barely two months later.
Now, two years later in late 1918, it was Walter’s turn. His mother protested; she didn’t want to lose another son to the cruel grasp of war and certain death. But his father was persistent and eventually she relented. It didn’t stop her from hugging her son very tight and pleading with tear filled eyes to promise her to come home and to survive. He promised her, even though the lie tasted ashen on his tongue. His father clapped his shoulder and told him to “be strong and bring honor to this family”.
Walter wasn’t sure how he would manage that. How would you achieve glory in a war that seemed so meaningless? He could feel the tiredness of the people; their sunken eyes and skinny bodies speaking of their suffering. But he must be able to do something at the front, end this war for good by helping with an attack.
Reluctant but optimistic, Walter Kettler entered training and was shipped off to the Western Front on November 9th 1918.
~**~
It was cold when they arrived on November 11th. The fields they drove past were covered in frost and the morning air made their breaths curl in white clouds in front of their faces. Climbing out of the truck had Walter almost colliding with another soldier. He was about to apologize when said soldier only took him by the arm and dragged him in the direction the other soldiers were going.
“What-?” Was all Walter could stutter out before the other soldier shushed him.
“Listen.” The soldier gestures upwards towards a figure standing on a balcony overseeing the whole courtyard.
The person - who turned out to be General Friedrichs - gave a speech about how the armistice had been singed, but that apparently wouldn’t stop him from sending them out to fight one last battle and win the preferable conditions in the case of a peace treaty. One last hurrah of the Kaiser’s army to prove their bravery and fight heroically for victory, even though the war was already lost. Still, the speech was captivating and Walter felt himself be pulled into the spell the charismatic general was weaving. He wanted to fight for the Kaiser and the Vaterland like his teachers had told him. He still wanted to make his father proud. But some didn’t think like him.
As soon as protests were heard and the first soldiers dragged towards the walls of the building, did the soldier, who had been holding Walter’s arm in an iron grip since Walter had arrived, tell him to not look and had turned Walter around. The sound of shots made Walter flinch, before he almost instinctively started to turn around and locate the source of the shots he heard. The soldier only gripped his arm harder and turned him around again.
The silence between them was almost stifling, so Walter made the decision to break the ice.
“What is your name?” He asked timidly, almost expecting a rejection and the silence to return. The soldier was quiet. Walter had almost given up when a rough voice answered: “Paul Bäumer.”
“It’s nice to meet you Paul. I’m Walter. Walter Kettler. Have you been here long?”
Paul chuckled, but it sounded wrong; broken. “Too long, kid, way too long. Now be quiet, we’ll be marching soon and you’ll have to preserve energy.”
~**~
They started all marching towards the front soon after. It gave Walter the perfect opportunity to really look at Paul for the first time since they met.
Paul’s skin was pale and covered in grime, the rings under his eyes were gigantic and his eyes were sunken into their sockets. His body seemed gangly and too thin, even under all the layers of his clothes. He looked sick.
But the look in Paul’s eyes was the most harrowing. They looked…empty. Like the spark of life every human has was missing. Like he was already dead, even though he was still walking. Walter had already seen this look in the eyes of many soldiers who returned home either during leave or because of an injury. They were cold, almost like ghosts; observing the life around them but not partaking in it, removed from that reality entirely and unable to join it somehow.
Walter always did wonder why they never made the effort to join them. They could easily ask for a place at their table in the pub and order a beer like them. Their insistence to never talk about the war was also quite annoying. Yeah, sure, it was terrible but why shouldn’t you be able to talk about it, it couldn’t have been that bad.
Slowly the marching came to an end. They had arrived at the front and were starting the attack.
“What time is it?” Paul asks a fellow soldier. “Quarter to eleven,” They answer. Paul nods, he looked resigned but also resolute. Walter wanted to ask him what he had decided for himself, but was interrupted by the harsh whistle signaling their advance.
Running silently over the desolate wasteland that Walter would later learned was called no-man’s-land was almost surreal. The thick fog prevented them from seeing much and the feeling of unease growing in Walter’s stomach was making him extremely nervous. Especially since he’d lost Paul. Walter was now left clutching his rifle tightly and running along with the others around him. He hoped he would find Paul again soon.
~**~
Shots ring out around him, people are screaming and explosions shake the earth. Walter is scared- no he’s terrified. He doesn’t want to be there anymore. He doesn’t – he doesn’t –
Splashing footsteps in the trench alert him of someone coming in his direction. He looks up in time to hear someone yell “NO!” above him and see the advancing Frenchman get shot in the head. Paul jumps down into the trench and asks Walter: “Are you alright, kid?” All Walter can do is nod, still pressed up against the trench wall in his terror. He’s pretty sure he pissed himself. Paul just nods in acknowledgement and turns around.
A split second later Paul is attacked again by a Frenchman lunging at him and grappling with him in the mud. It looks like Paul was winning when the Frenchman gets the upper hand and presses Paul facedown into the mud, trying to drown him. Walter cannot move, as much as he desperately wants to. He wants to help Paul; he wants to save his life. But he was frozen in shock and cannot move a damn muscle. Walter watches helplessly as Paul drowns and chokes, until Paul manages to throw the French of him and the both of the stumble away and out of sight.
A sergeant comes by and yells at Walter to “MOVE! MOVE!” and it manages to shake Walter out of his petrified state and he moves down the trench, after the sergeant. He helps his comrades and kills a man for the first time.
He flinches when the blood hits his hands and stains them crimson. The empty eyes of the man stare up at him and he knows they will haunt him for many years to come. Only seconds later the armistice is called and all fighting ceases.
Exhausted, Walter sits down on one of the benches near a dugout and breathes. He takes his canteen and starts gulping down water, the coldness refreshing after the fighting. He is relieved that the war is over and immediately feels guilty for that. He was only at the front for one day; he has no right to feel that way. Others - like Paul - have been at the front much longer; they deserve to be relieved over the war ending. They survived much more than one simple battle. Walter sighs softly and looks up at the bleary gray sky.
~**~
A few minutes had passed and the trenches were bustling with activity; the soldiers of both countries cleaning up and taking stock. Walter still sits there resting, idly wondering what happened to Paul and if he was wandering around somewhere in the long and winding trench, when an officer comes towards him.
“Are you broken soldier?”
Walter shakes his head.
“Then get to collecting.” The officer orders and throws a small sack at Walter. With one quick peek Walter confirms his suspicion: dog tags. He has to collect the dog tags of the fallen. He stands up and starts his task. He doesn’t have to walk far to find the first dead. He only has to take a few steps until the next one.
Walter feels numb, like he isn’t really connected to the world anymore. He registers the blood and gore of the bodies he collects the tags from, but he only mechanically breaks the tag and moves on after throwing it in the pouch.
Everything is fine until he reaches towards the next tag and notices a familiar jacket. Slowly, Walter lifts his head and is met with the face of Paul Bäumer. He looks almost peaceful, his eyes closed and expression serene, only the bloodstain on the front of his jacket ruining the image. Walter sinks to his knees in shock. His mind repeating the words ‘No’ and ‘It can’t be’ while he stares at the only person he knew during his short stay. Paul had protected him and saved his life. He was at the front far longer than Walter. He deserved to live, not die the last few minutes before the end.
Suddenly, Walter notices the white scarf in Paul’s hands. Slowly he reaches for it and pulls it into his own hands. It was covered in grime and stained terribly, but it was a piece obviously held dear by Paul. Shakily Walter raises it over his head and ties it around his neck. Then he breaks the dog tag and stands up without looking at Paul’s face, moving onto the next corpse.
~**~
Months later, after Walter had returned back home, his father asks about the scarf he would always wear.
“It belonged to someone that saved my life.” He answered and refused to elaborate, no matter how much his father needled him.
After arriving at university and making friends there, they asked him the same question: “Where did he get the scarf and why would he never take it off?”
Walter answered the same every time: “It belonged to someone who saved my life.”
No matter where he went, he always wore the scarf or had it with him in the pocket of his suit. Not even his fiancée and later wife knew how he got the scarf and why he always wore it.
Only much later, when Walter was nearing eighty and was sitting in his rocking chair with his grandchildren playing at his feet, did he look at the scarf and called to the family.
“Let me tell you the story all of you wanted to hear so badly for many years. Let me tell you of the man I barely knew but who saved my live when I was just shy of eighteen and who this scarf belonged to.” Walter holds up the scarf, which after many, many years of use was scrubbed thin and barely hanging together.
His children, wife and grandchildren gather curiously around him in the living room, together with his sons and daughters in laws.
“His name was Paul Bäumer, and he was barely older than me, but he had the look of a man almost twice his age and he…”
So the story of Paul Bäumer lived on for generations in the family Kettler. The brave but broken young man that saved Walter without ever knowing anything but his name. The scarf was carefully preserved in a frame after the passing of Walter and is hanging together with the family photos in the living room. A memory not forgotten. A young man remembered.