Books like The Road Back

The last combats and skirmishes… Peace is nearing… However death still keeps doing its dire work… And the dread doesn’t let go.“Gas shells!” shouts Willy, springing up.We are all awake now and listening intently.Wessling points into the air. “There they are! Wild geese!”Moving darkly against the drab grey of the clouds is a streak, a wedge, its point steering toward the moon. It cuts across its red disc. The black shadows are plainly visible, an angle of many wings, a column of squalling, strange, wild cries, that loses itself in the distance.“Off they go,” growls Willy. “Damn it all – if only we could pull out like that! Two wings and away.”The war is over and the road back home lies ahead… For those who have managed to deceive death and survive.The wide, grey square is much too big for us. Across it sweeps a bleak November wind smelling of decay and death. We are lined up between the canteen and the guard-room, more space we do not require. The wide, empty square about us wakes woeful memories. There, rank on rank, invisible, stand the dead.The war is over but its echo is long and sorrowful: horrendous memories, nightmares, madness, nervous breakdowns, psychological traumas, suicides, alienation…The things here are stronger – the things that differentiate us from one another are too powerful. The common interest is no longer decisive. It has broken up already, and given place to the interest of the individual. Now and then something still will shine through from that other time when we all wore the same rig, but already it is diminished and dim. These others here are still our comrades, and yet our comrades no longer – that is what is so sad. All else went west in the war, but comradeship we did believe, in; now only to find that what death could not do, life is achieving – it is driving us asunder.The gory wave of war retreats and on the shore of peace crippled bodies, crippled minds, crippled souls and ruined fates are left… And generals are already readying new wars…