Der Zug war pünktlich

"I don't want to die, but the terrible thing is that I will die... soon!" With this certainty, the young soldier boards the front vacation train at a station in a city in the Ruhr area, which is supposed to take him back to the Eastern Front. It will be a bleak journey. Men, thrown together by chance, play skat, share bread and sausage, and try to numb their fear with schnapps. Andreas remembers his friend, a woman whose eyes he could only glance into for a fraction of a second. He thinks of his previous wounds and hates everyone who sees war as a matter of course. The train stops in Lviv. Here, Andreas encounters a spy who collects messages for the Polish resistance under the guise of a prostitute.

Heinrich Böll has condensed this story of senseless dying into a bitter indictment against war with compelling realism.