It's been about 168 hours, which would mark a full week since I left my home and Mother to fight for my country. The year is 1914 and it is the 28th of september it has been about two months since the the Great War started. Back home in Loudon all the old timers think this is the war that will end all wars. Me personally I don't know if it will end any conflict, I do hope it does though. I haven’t even seen any major battles yet but as my battalion and I keep moving to the front lines we see the destruction, the death, the chaos that this war has inflicted upon all of Europe. Just yesterday as my battalion which is 2nd battalion and another battalion which is 4th battalion were moving east to support the troops on the front lines we saw it. …show more content…
We all the saw the waves and waves of our broken down soldiers come past us. We saw the injured, sick, and the dead. It was almost as if I was dreaming looking down on all of them as if they all were ghost that were stuck staring at something beyond. Me seeing all of this is just building up the growing anxiety that I have about being apart of this war. My buddy Charles he is trying to make light out of the whole thing, ya know he just tries to lighten up the mood in our squad and bring the morale up. You have to give him credit for trying, it might seem he is making everyone smile, but deep down everyone does have there own doubts about getting closer and closer to the trenches. I’ve heard alot about trenches but I have never seen one nor lived in one. I know that they are like big 7 to 8 foot cuts in the ground that stretches across a long front that we will be living in and defending. My mother has warned me about being prepared with dry new socks. Even though she really dislike me going to fight in the war she couldn’t stop me. I’m Eighteen now just turned back in July before the war started. She really thought that I was thinking foolishly and she wanted me to stay home to help on the farm. I think it's mainly because of my fathers death a while ago, and she needs someone home to talk to and see, and to try to cope. Before I departed she wanted to remind me of how much I meant to her and that she couldn’t lose me to. I made a promise on that night before I left, I said to her that I will come home to her and that I will always no matter what love her. We Finally arrived on the western front.
It’s is a different feeling when the ground rumbles and shakes from the incoming and outgoing heavy guns. Speaking of heavy guns on our way to the trenches me and my company got the pleasure of seeing our heavy guns up close. I think that it brought a good feeling to everyone that knew they were getting backed up by those immense field artillery. As we approached the trenches two of the soldiers in my company got hit by a flying projectile. Know one really knew where it came from, I mean considering that there is constant chaotic bullet fire on both sides it could of been a sniper. That is a eerie feeling not knowing if there is a sniper or snipers that watch the reinforcements go into the trenches. What does the sniper just chose out of all your fellow soldiers who is gonna die today. Anyways we were told that me and my squad will spend the next four days on the front lines. How are we gonna do it. After we spend four days here we go to a reserves camp and then rotate back in. It seems like all of the men have gone through hell, even more than hell. I keep telling myself that I need to keep my head down and get home to my mom. It will be in three months that I will finally go back home. I need to get back home and soon I already hate it here and three months is gonna be too long. There is so much death, diseases, hatred, and hate. Hate for the enemy side and hatred for cause of everyone's suffering here. As a child I never really cared about the sundays me and my parents took to go to church. Now it's all I can think about. I think of god and of the miracles that i’m praying
for. You can’t get any sleep. Not only because of the rumbles, shakes, and bangs but also because of the thought in the back of your head that reminds you that the enemies could be rushing your trenches as you sleep to slaughter you while you rest. Charles got to be my bunk mate and he is helping by just being there. He is a friendly face that I get to see, that and he has some pretty good jokes. He is a good guy and I hope we both can live to tell our stories to our friends and family. Charles woke me up extra early today because we have scouting duty today. On scouting duty you and a buddy will crawl far and off to the right of the battlefield. You basically gather intel on the enemies movement and what they are doing. After we crawl which seems to take forever we get up on the scout position and stay very still. You don't want to be seen as a moving dead body you want to stay as a dead body because then the enemy will know you aren’t actually not alive. The way they lit up the tiny bit of movement is insane. A rat moved from body to body once and then in about one or maybe two seconds the rat got peppered with at least 50 to 60 rounds. After collecting intel and reporting it all to our Lieutenants me and charles get some down time. We found out that making souvenirs of shell casings and carving them is pretty fun, It passes time and it makes you feel good that you made a cool design on something. Apparently after the intel we sent got received and processed they pieced together that a big assault was coming our way, and we were gonna counter it. Based off the speeches all of the captains of all the squads gave the counter will go like this. First the attack by the germans is gonna be the biggest yet we know this based on all the boxes of ammo and all of the rations stacked near there frontlines. Second we will all be up when the attack is gonna happen because we will need everyone, so no sleeping, we expect the attack to be in the next 6-8 hours. Third we will give it everything we have all of our grenades all of our manpower and all of our guts and will. Fourth after we attempt to either kill all the attackers or send them retreating back we will send all of our men after them. They will be so weak and not ready since they just got gun downed by a unexpected intensive amount of power. We think that they are sending all of their men to us to try to overrun us. So that's why we need to be so prepared with anything and everything. We won't sustain as many as casualties compared to them, at first. As we all sat crouched and squeezed in trenches just after me and Charles said a quick prayer we could hear them. The sound of whistles and thousands of men rushing towards you is something haunting. At first it was the whistles and the roar of the infantryman. Then it was the bullets and bangs of there gunmen providing covering fire. Our guns then started unleashing and then we all started throwing the grenades. After that there was still so many of them they wouldn't stop. They were getting closer and closer. All of the men were on the edge of the trench peeking over and shooting. When I was up there I saw so much death and carnage that I froze. You can hear when a bullet is coming. As I was frozen there I could here all of the bullets come past me and near me. At first the bullet that hit my shoulder felt like a sledgehammer knocking my shoulder out of socket I think. Then I tried to grab onto the dirt or something that I could displace the feeling in my body. I heard charles voice booming over all the chaos calling for help. But then before I could look at the warm liquid flowing down my arm and chest I passed out. The doctors said it was a miracle that charles wrapped his coat around my arm just in time. I would of bled out right there. Everyone else bled out alone and suffering. When I intentionally woke up I thought I was dead sitting in the room with white everywhere. I sat there trying to make sense of what happened. I wondered if we won the battle or not. Shortly after the doctor checked in with me he said that I will be ok and I will live. Live I thought what about everyone else there at that fight. But I knew that I was gonna go back home soon.
plot of the novell itself. He offen does this by describing the death of Paul's
Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that takes you through the life of a soldier in World War I. Remarque is accurately able to portray the episodes soldiers go through. All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and during the war. This novel is able to show the great change war has evolved to be. From lining your men up and charging in the eighteenth century, to digging and “living” in the trenches with rapid-fire machine guns, bombs, and flame-throwers being exposed in your trench a short five meters away. Remarque makes one actually feel the fun and then the tragedy of warfare. At the beginning of the novel Remarque gives you nationalist feelings through pride of Paul and the rest of the boys. However at the end of the war Remarque shows how pointless war really is. This is felt when everyone starts to die as the war progresses.
The story of several schoolmates who symbolize a generation destroyed by the dehumanisation of the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front tells of the men who died, and the tragically changed lives of those who survived. Remarque follows the story of Paul Bäumer, a young infantryman, from his last days of school to his death three years later. Whereas the journey motif is typically used to portray a positive character development, that of Paul is deliberately the opposite. In what has been dubbed the greatest antiwar novel of all time, Remarque depicts the way in which Paul is snatched away from humanity by the brutality of war. However while Paul and his comrades become separated from society, and begin to rely on their basic survival instincts, in their own surroundings they still show humane qualities such as compassion, camaraderie, support and remorse. Paul’s transformation from human to soldier begins in training camp, and is reinforced by the trauma at the front. His return home further alienates him from society, and Paul begins to feel safe at the front with his friends. Nonetheless throughout the novel suffering and mortality bare Paul’s true side, and he momentarily regains his former self. Bäumer, the German word for tree, is an early indication that Paul must remain firmly rooted in reality to survive the brutality of war.
Throughout their lives, people must deal with the horrific and violent side of humanity. The side of humanity is shown through the act of war. This is shown in Erich Remarque’s novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front”. War is by far the most horrible thing that the human race has to go through. The participants in the war suffer irreversible damage by the atrocities they witness and the things they go through.
The chapter begins with German soldiers at rest after fourteen days of fierce battle on the Western Front. A double ration of food has been prepared so the soldiers are eating their fill. Paul Baumer, the protagonist and narrator of the novel, watches in amazement as his friends, Tjaden and Muller, eat another helping; he wonders where Tjaden puts all the food, for he is as thin as a rail. Baumer is only nineteen years of age. He enlisted in the German infantry because Kantorek, his high school teacher, had glorified war and talked him into fighting for the fatherland. Kropp, Behm, and Leer, former classmates of Baumer, were also persuaded by Kantorek to join the infantry. They are all now fellow soldiers along with Tjaden, Westhus, Detering, and Katczinsky.
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque is a first hand experience account of the war. The horror of the war and Remarque's own terrifying experiences and memories would certainly have effected what he wrote. All Quiet on the Western Front was published in March 1929, London. The late publication of the novel may have been due to the grief and trauma that Remarque experienced in the war.
World War I had a great effect on the lives of Paul Baumer and the young men of his generation. These boys’ lives were dramatically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, [they] were destroyed by the war” (preface). In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer and the rest of his generation feel separated from the other men, lose their innocence, and experience comradeship as a result of the war.
The greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, is a novel that depicted the hardships of a group of teenagers who enlisted in the German Army during World War 1. Enlisting right out of high school forced the teens to experience things they had never thought of. From the life of a soilder on the front line to troubles with home life, war had managed to once again destroy a group of teenagers.
I miss you very much. Since the last I wrote to you, it was awful. I hate it here. The trench we are currently in is old and worse than the one we were placed in before. The aroma here is very unpleasant. At times I feel as if I will become deafened by the constant sound of shells, being fired back and forth. It's always dark here, the sky is always filled with big black clouds. I miss it back home where the sky was blue and the clouds were white. Last time we left the trenches we marched 15 miles with not a lot of water, no food and the weather was very bad.Things are hard to describe but even harder to deal with. I haven't experienced anything as awful as this before. Life at home was so peaceful before this whole tragedy happened. We barely
Detering – A married farmer, he is disgusted that horses are being used in the war.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the most superb World War I motion picture. The movie had a budget of $1.25 million (which was very expensive at the time) and runs 128 minutes long giving enough time to capture the horrors of war perfectly. The Great War was the subject for many movies during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, most offering a serious and very emotional time for the audience. It’s no coincidence that two of the first three Best Picture Oscars were awarded to World War I movies. Even though the movie is dated for this day in age, the battle scenes are still as emotional and bone chilling. Director Lewis Milestone’s attention to detail plays a major role when filming trench scenes and because of this, it makes it hard to realize that the film was actually filmed in California and not in Germany or France.
Dark clouds settled above, forever watching the monstrous scene forming below. Flashes of lightning lit up the caliginous sky, a temporary false dawn. Rain moulded the once solid ground into a sodden, quagmire mess. War was the worst at night; when the fear of whistling bombs deprived soldiers of sleep and dreams of drowning in a green sea caused their hearts to palpitate. It was then, that they were left with their undesired thoughts. Waiting, watching, for the next barrage. The men sat silent and still; their thoughts repressing them from distant rest. Their eyes were empty sockets, stripped raw by the weight of their experiences in war. Settled amongst the soldiers on the Western Front, a distinctively younger boy stood out from the rest, eyes vibrant, ardent for some desperate glory.
David Coates said, “This is not our fight alone, nor is it our fight to lead.” The problems we are trying to fix should affect not just the US but also the countries around us. We should not stop being proud of our country but we also can't be stubborn. ISIS has threatened and attacked the United States and other countries as well. October 2016 This group of terrorists “downed a Russian passenger jet, killing all 224 people on board” (Karen). Two weeks after that a bus was driven through a crowd in Paris and “killed more than 100 people.”(Karen) These are only two instances these groups have directly attacked parts of the world. There are also many inspired killings for this radical group. We need to get together with these countries before
I have finally found the opportunity to send you a letter. I’m sure you have received many postcards from me, saying that I am well. I am not allowed to tell you much news as all outgoing mail is being censored by our officers. Presently, the censoring is quite strict. During the day, my fellow soldiers and I see either one of our airplanes or one of the German's shelled by the antiaircraft gun. The shells burst all around the airplane; however, I have yet to see one make contact. As the shell bursts, we can see the fire and the smoke making a dark cloud that stuck around for fifteen minutes. Since the airplanes fly at high altitudes, they are considered out of range.
Mother I’m telling you it’s horrible over here, I can’t stand this! We barely have shelter, food, clothes to wear, always getting bitten by bugs, and we don’t even have beds to sleep on. I have to literally sleep on the ground, pretending the dirt was my mattress. Trust me it was not comfortable! I had blood splashed all over me. This war got out of control and it became a “terrain of death”, and there was so many dead bodies that stretched 500 miles! The worst part was that the warfare in the trenches was that it was so dirty, smelly and people who have contagious diseases such as cholera and trench foot. For soldiers life in the trenches meant living in fear. Furthermore, there is an open space between two sets of opposing trenches became