By Gregory Thornquest

There are no soldiers that come out of war unwounded. Physical, mental, and emotional wounds spread throughout a war-torn society in a similar way shrapnel from artillery on the front line blankets the land surrounding it.

Erich Maria Remarque in his novel All Quiet on the Western Front walks the reader through the devolution of a soldier’s transformation from man to beast and the creation and demise of the “Iron Youth”.

He writes, “The thunder of the guns swells to a single heavy roar and then breaks up again into separate explosions. The dry bursts of the machine-guns rattle. Above us the air teems with invisible swift movement, with howls, piping, and hisses. They are smaller shells;-and amongst them, booming through the night like an organ, go the great coal-boxes and the heavies.” His writing is beautifully horrific, filled with creative analogies and personification, all the while describing the terrors of man and war. This piece of art can only derive from a first hand experience of such situations of suffering and loss. As Remarque enters WW I himself at age 18 he will be transformed into what the novel refers to as the “Iron Youth”, until he is wounded multiple times and spends the rest of 1918 healing in an army hospital in Germany. It is a triumphant feat that he survived, but I can’t help but ponder how many great authors, teachers, and doctors were amongst the estimated 9 million lost during this “Great War”.

I suffer from a heart aching with gratitude for soldiers and the families who have had to make the greatest sacrifice. I believe this emotional draw to the main character Paul was intentional. We are taken into the most intimate and personal situations one can be brought as we first travel to the front line to meet his comrades. Then we are escorted to his home to visit mother and are there made aware of his conscious dualism battling to detach himself from the civilized world or to be humanly vulnerable. Eventually we are thrust back to the front line to experience the true face of war and participate in loss alongside Paul. 

At the end I am overwhelmed with sorrow for such a loss of life and frustrated at the ignorance of man to not learn from the mistakes history has taught us. The author has forced me to care and for that I am grateful.