All Quiet . . .

Last night I finally finished Ramarque's All Quite on the Western Front. Now I see why Casey raved so much about the book since he read it a few years ago.

I have always found WWI and trench warfare one of the most interesting -- and sad -- occurrences in history. One cannot imagine the horrors of any war, but there is something about the Great War that is even more horrifying than any war before or since.

Certainly the American Civil War was bloody, as was the French Revolution. Yes, D-Day and the island hopping campaigns of WWII were also horrifying. But they pale in comparison to the horrors and the horrifying impact of trench warfare. It has been said that this war was unlike any other one because it began with men fighting on horseback - some even went off to war with sabers and the same paraphernalia that they wore during the Napoleonic wars! -- and it ended with men fighting in tanks and airplanes -- the tank was a particularly grisly weapon, not only for its ability to shell but also that it could plow through any shell hole or trench - and reducing the enemy hiding/fighting in those holes or trenches to so much jelly on the treads. Horrifying, right?

And I haven't even mentioned the thing that the Great War is mostly known for: gas warfare.

All of these things are captured brilliantly in Remarque's novel. Early in the book, our main characters are enjoying a feast of rations. But it is all a mistake. The platoon has been sent rations for 150 men, but there are only 80. The rest were killed in one single battle. This helps foreshadow the atrocities to come. Our main character, Paul Baumer, witnesses a man charging his trench who gets caught in the barbwire in No Man's Land (the ungodly land between the German and French/British trenches). The soldiers attempts to climb over the wire but is mowed down by machine gun fire. The only thing left are his hands are forearms clinging to the wire.

Soon, a man, a farmer in his civilian life, is nearly killed when he cannot take the screaming of the horses anymore - they have been wounded by the English shells, and runs to put them out of their misery despite the heavy fire that is raining down on them. Finally, though, the snipers are able to put the beasts out of their misery, one having its spine broken and thrashing about in a circle and another has been gutted and tries to run away, only to become tangled in its own entrails.

Later the German soldiers must endure the whaling and begging of a comrade who has been shot in the spine and dies slowly - and painfully - out on No Man's Land. But they cannot find him. It's not for a lack of trying, though. His cries seem to come from every where. Finally, after three days the cries cease - for the dead man. The soldiers themselves, though, will never forget what they have heard.

And these are just a few of the physical and emotional horrors of the front.

Remarque does a phenomenal job of eliminating all politics and rhetoric from his novel. It is simply the story of one man's attempt to survive a war that he has no real stake in. He is persuaded to enlist thanks to his schoolmaster drunk on nationalism. However, in an ironic twist of fate, that very same schoolmaster winds up as a 'territorial' soldier (which I think is a type of military reserve force). There the soldiers can exact a bit of revenge on the man who so zealously sent them to such horrors. The first time they see their old schoolmaster subtly reinforces the lost cause of the German side of the battle, for he is ridiculously clad in a uniform that doesn't remotely fit him. His cap is too small, his shirt too big, his trousers too small, and his boots gigantic on his feet. His uniform, like the rest of the troops sent to the front, is hastily thrown together and has no hope of serving any real type of purpose. This is not lost on the soldiers.

The German troops come to the bitter realization, as all troops must unless they are completely brainwashed as a result of drills and abuse, that they are just pawns, not heroes deserving of parades or metals.

Simply pawns to be used as the higher ups wish. One of the wisest soldiers in Baumer's class recommends "a declaration or war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting." This passage is one that has been repeated throughout war literature. I am reminded of the poem, "The Man He Killed," by Thomas Hardy (http://www.illyria.com/hardyman.html) where a soldier realizes that had he and his enemy not been forced to meet on the battlefield, they might have actually become friends. Since their countries, though, are at war, they must attempt to kill each other.

Another interesting aspect of All Quiet on the Western Front is the importance of nature's beauty to the soldiers. This is echoed in one of the best war novels of recent times, Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novel The Things They Carried, where he confesses that being so close to death makes him feel more alive. This too has been echoed by some of the soldiers' blogs (when I could actually get access to them) from the Iraq war.

That realization was one of the most shocking to my students - after reading the blog entry, several students said that it made them feel like they wanted to go out and kick some ass (which scared the hell out of me) while others said that it horrified them, several students asked shouldn't holding your child for the first time or playing with your kids be the time you feel most alive? But I think one can hardly blame the soldiers for feeling this way given all of their training and the fact that they are thrust into such situations that forces them to feel such an adrenalin rush. And what is the alternative if they don't feel that rush or resort to the most primitive of human instincts (to kill and survive)? Death. I don't see how the soldiers can avoid feeling such things.

At the same time as a soldier is facing death, somehow they are able to see the world around them in a much different light. Knowing that this might be the last time you see the blue sky or the ocean or your wife's picture, how could you not feel an intimacy with the earth and your life? How could your perceptions not be sharpened and heightened?

Baumer observes such a state: "From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us -- mostly from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever."

One of the most powerful scenes in the book occurs when Baumer gets extended leave. He returns home to his mother, who is dying from cancer, his father, who constantly wants to know what it is like at the front, and his sister, who finds herself trying to do what she can to hold the family together. To escape his father's questioning and his mother's watchful gaze, Baumer heads to the streets. However, he soon is noticed by a wealthy German who ushers him in to a bar and gives him cigar after cigar. Of course, he wants to know how things are really going. When Baumer tells him that the Germans are getting their asses kicked, the man wants to hear nothing of it. Instead, he spouts off about what the German government needs to do to win the war. The juxtaposition here is powerful. How the man just brushes aside all of Baumer's knowledge and first hand encounters for his own ridiculous solutions to the problems is incredible. The man tells Baumer ". . . but this relates to the whole. And of that you are not able to judge. You see only your little sector and so cannot have any general survey. you do your duty, you risk your lives, that deserves the highest honor -- every man of you ought to have the Iron Cross -- but first of all the enemy line must be broken through in Flanders and then rolled up from the top . . . Completely rolled up they must be, from the top to the bottom. And then to Paris." Obviously, the man, though he claims to know so much more than the soldier, has no clue about how truly impossible his plan is.

This speaks volumes about any society - not just Germany's in WWI. Can't you just hear Rush Limbaugh, Ed Schultz, Bill O' Reilly, Ann Coulter and others blathering on?

Ultimately, Baumer endures.

He survives a harrowing return to the front where he spends several days trapped in a shell hole with an enemy soldier whom he thinks he kills by stabbing him three times when he falls into the shell crater as he retreats - however, Baumer realizes that he just morally wounded the man. He ends up caring for him - bandaging his wounds and bringing him water from the bottom of the crater. Here we see the true humanity in the soldiers. In that crater it makes no difference that they are enemies, it is simply one man helping another, one man helping a father and husband. Of course, Baumer also observes that he is doing this because if he is captured by the French, they will see how he tried to help their fellow soldier and won't immediately kill him.

He is eventually shot in the leg and arm along with one of his fellow soldiers, Kropp. They are sent to a hospital, which can be even more harrowing than the front. They have the fortune of landing in a Catholic hospital. Though they have to endure the morning prayers of the nuns, they are taken care of for the most part. But the horrors still persist. Baumer is able to get up and move around on crutches. He ventures outside their wing and sees how the hospital is truly organized. On one side are the facial wounds. On the other side are the blind and lung wounds as well as soldiers who have been injured in the groin, joints, and guts.

There is also a fanatical doctor who is obsessed with curing soldiers with flat feet. Two young recruits come in with superficial wounds, but the doctor notes that they are both flat footed. He quickly encourages them to have a surgery performed to cure them. A veteran of the hospital, a soldier who has been there close to two years, warns them that the doctor is nuts and that any one he operates on has club feet for the rest of their lives. Another soldier doesn't think that is so bad. Better to be a cripple the rest of your life than to return to the front and get shot in the head. Still, the veteran encourages the two young soldiers to refuse the surgery, which they do. However, the doctor hauls them in, and knowing they are too young to stand up to him, berates them for being foolish, and they relent and undergo the surgery. We see them return to the unit full of chloroform and their feet in casts. We never know their outcome.

What is most horrifying for the soldiers is being taken away by the nurses . . . to what is called "the Dying Room." Here they are left to die while their previous bed is taken up by a soldier who might recover. Here the veteran soldier warns the others of what this means. Soon a soldier who is shot in the chest is taken away. They never see him again. Then the nurses come for a young soldier. He kicks and screams and swears that he won't go. They tell him that they are just taking him to the bandaging ward, but they all know what that means. Finally, he is forced out - crying that he will return. His bed is quickly occupied. But he does returns several weeks later. A first.

However, Baumer's friend, Kropp, who was shot in the thigh, must have his leg amputated. Here we see a true fear of the soldiers (early on in the book there is the horrifying account of the death of another friend, Kemmerich, who has most of his leg amputated but never recovers). Baumer is so terrified that he might have his leg amputated that he refuses chloroform so that he can stay awake to see what is going on. He endures terrible pain as the doctor fishes around his wound and finally extracts a piece of shrapnel from his thigh, while reducing much of the muscle to hamburger. But he will not amputate his leg. It seems that many doctors resort to amputation rather than risk infections or long recoveries, which hog vital hospital beds. Cut it off and send them home seems to be a popular treatment for injuries. Kropp, though, is not as fortunate as Baumer. He swears that he will kill himself if he loses his leg. Baumer can never look at Kropp again as he tries to get up and move around on his crutches, for Kropp stares at him and thinks God knows what. Finally, Kropp is sent away to a place specializing in artificial limbs. He has his freedom from the war, but at what cost? Here I am reminded of the passage from the brief prologue which ends with "even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war."

The ultimate impact of the novel is that the reader knows that for an entire generation of young men, and not just Germans but also Russians, Americans, Brits, and Frenchmen, have not only lost their youth and innocence, but also their places in the world. For how can one return to civilization after seeing horrors unlike any other war?

So many went to war with ideas of glory and honor -- remember wars previously were fought much differently. In previous wars, a commander, through superior skill and tactics, could lead his troops to victory in hand to hand combat. This was the embodiment of the heroic code that had been part of British society since the epic Beowulf.

However, that was not the case in WWI. A lone soldier, regardless of his skill, could open a can of mustard gas or aim a rocket and dozens of soldiers would die. Where is the glory and honor in that? The Great War marks the death of the heroic code.

Often the commanders were incompetent since their families were often able to buy powerful positions in the military. Just because on is wealthy and of a higher social class doesn't mean you have a clue about leading men into battle. This cost countless lives in the war. There is the horrifying tale of the battle of Traflager (I believe) where one British general sent thousands of men, mostly troops recruited from Australia, to their deaths while he sat on his ship and drank martinis.

The Great War was also the first time (at least in British history) where the public perception of war, where a young man does his duty by leading the empire to victor (best embodied in the poem "The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke with his famous lines

"If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England."

Here the soldier gladly gives his life for the greater good of England, just as other generations of soldiers had.

However, this idealized concept of death on the battle field is quickly crushed by the horrors of gas warfare, tanks, amputations/injuries (again, unlike any other war, the civilians could literally see the horrors of war walking or stumbling or begging right on their streets as thousands of injured soldiers came home - soldiers with no legs or arms or faces).

That is why Baumer would agree with the British Trench Poets, the most famous poem being Wilfred Owen's "Dulce Et Decorum Est" (http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Dulce.html). Baumer would also sympathize with the poor bastard in another Owen poem, "Disabled" (http://www.world-war-pictures.com/war-poems/disabled.htm).

Tragically, like so many others, Owen himself was killed one week before the end of the war.

Ultimately, Remarque has a novel that will always be relevant. I couldn't help but compare it with O'Brien's novel and the events that are taking place in Iraq now. That is the mark of a true classic.