Umm, this was a school project. I rewrote the ending to All Quiet on the Western Front, from the point of view of Paul's sister Greta Baumer... so enjoy? This really is different from what I normally do... :)
Paul's last letter came three days before the telegram. The letter had made me along with the rest of my family hopeful for his safe return, rumors of an end were starting to spread. The look of glory and pride my father held for my brother shone brightly through his eyes as he read the letter from Paul, but three days later after telegram informing us of his death, his eyes went flat.
It is often said how a son is the apple in a father's eye. When my brother died, the light went out my father's. The pride he felt in sending his only son off to war was filled with regret in letting him go. Glory cannot replace the loss of a loved one and after the loss of Paul, and my mother a few months before, my father about shattered.
Thinking of this I walk through the small garden on the outskirts of town. It is a place that since the war started hasn't been as up kept, but still lovely to sit and think. Slowly I walk down the pathways until I find the bench in the center. A bare tree hangs over the bench sadly as a cool breeze whispers across my skin. I pull my jacket closer while running a hand over the smooth wooden frame before sitting on it lightly.
Paul had once taken care of me here. I had joined in on a game of tag with all of his friends, since I had believed I could play with the boys. It wasn't long before I was tripped up on the gravel and cut open my knee. Paul had sat me down on this bench and cleaned up my knee with his shirttails, my mother would later scold him for that, but he wouldn't, couldn't do that anymore, because the telegram said that my brother was dead. Those memories were just sad reminders as to what has passed and what the future cannot be.
In the last letter, Paul had spoken of how safe he was and the only thing that kept him thinking of the war was the sound of the front in the distance.
I close my eyes and try to imagine where he was as he wrote the letter, but I can't. The sound of bells in the village square fill my mind and impair my ability to imagine.
Sighing my eyes open and an image of a man stands a way before me. My heart pounds in my chest as I grip the edge of the bench. I feel the blood rushing from my face as the name falls from my lips. "Paul."
The man's cap is pulled down over his unruly hair and his face is hidden in the shadows of it. His shoulders stoop as if he is carrying the weight of the world and every move he makes is slow and stiff. His hands grip two crutches at his sides that hold him upright and help push him along. Catching my breath I gather the ability to look down.
Where there should have been a second limb there is nothing. One of the legs of his britches hangs down, slightly swaying in the wind as a wicked reminder to what has been lost. He pauses like he can no longer go on and I find my ability to speak again. "Oh Paul."
This time the man hears me. He looks up and I wince at the look in his eyes. It is a look of nothing. What is seen before me is the image of a man, but beneath the surface a creature that I can no longer identify. It is a look of such loss that he no longer looks sorrowful, but almost dead. What he had to have seen, to have felt, to gain such an appearance, I will never know.
Recognizing me the man appears to attempt to grin, but it falters and slips from his face in an almost evil grimace. The attempt isn't familiar to me for I realize painfully that this man isn't whom I hoped.
"Greta." Albert Kropp said softly in a voice so completely unrecognizable. Unable to take my eyes off of his broken figure I watch him stumble forward and sit himself gently beside me. He lies the crutches in-between us as a barrier; a reminder that we aren't the same anymore.
Pulling the cap from his head and he twists it uncomfortably in his hands as if he needs something to do. As his hands are busy, his eyes stare straight forward at something I can't determine. Unable to keep myself from doing so, I glance down at his stump of a hip.
Paul had told us that he was in the hospital beside Albert when they took his leg. He had told us this the last time we had seen him, before he put his uniform back on and headed out for battle, but what happened after was unclear and all town rumors. Somewhere in the rumors though, there seemed to be some truth. After Paul left, Albert had been struck down by infection making him sick for months, he was unable to return to the front after so many were being forced to. Albert, everyone believed, had been the lucky one.
Sitting here, seeing him in person, I can perceive that what everyone believed wasn't the truth. My father had said Albert had only lost a limb; he was a fortunate one. My father was wrong, anyone sitting near him could tell that he lost more than that. As much as I didn't want to admit it, or at least think it, Paul had been the lucky one.
The bell tolls out again and Albert winces in a way that has me thinking that he had tried to hide it from me. Where the bell should have given me joy, it only deepened the wound that had been ripped open when my father had read the telegram of Paul aloud to the family. The bell in a way was a ring of finality, an end to the past and a welcome to the future, but from where I sat there were a many that had no future to look forward to. The man sitting beside me was broken in a way that I deemed unfixable. My family was shattered by the death of my only brother so close after the loss of my mother. The bell represented a national loss, and so many others.
I turn towards Albert desperate to make this silence between us go away. His appearance has changed since I looked at him last. He has drawn a cigarette from his pocket and it dangles from his lip lit. His eyes are flat and he sighs as he pulls the cigarette away with two fingers and breathes out a stream of smoke. He stares at the burning end for a moment before dropping it to the ground and stepping on it with his only foot. He pulls his boot away and stares at the ruined cigarette blankly for a moment before whispering the words that neither of us had been able to say. "Well guys," His eyes rise and stare straight forward again. "All's quiet on the Western front."