Far more devastating than car wrecks, violent crimes or natural disasters, is

the tragedy that we call war. More men have lost their lives, broken their dreams

and shattered their hope than is possible to fathom. But far more than death stalks

the battlefields. A host of terrors, including homesickness, lonlieness, and the loss of

innocence play major roles in soldier's lives.

The most prevalent of these horrors is the specter of death. It is inescapable

to all men, but is a constant companion to soldiers. Death is omnipresent and

everchanging. It can take the form of shells, gas, or in the case of Kemmerich,

inexperienced doctors in unsanitary hospitals. As loathsome as it is to imagine a

forty year old soldier being shot down, imagine how much worse for an eighteen

year old boy to die surrounded by the squalor of a field hospital and the callous,

uncaring attitudes of hardened doctors. Kemmerich's human dignity was stripped

the minute his leg was amputated. As of that moment he became merely a statistic,

another wounded soldier. So perhaps death was a release for him. But for others,

death is the cruelest blow of all. From the moment he arrived in the story, we liked

Stanilaus Katczinsky. He was funny, easy with his men, and sharp, which is why his

death was such a blow to Paul. The ironic thing in Kat's death is that while he was

being rushed to be treated for a serious leg wound, he expired quietly from the

simplest of objects, a splinter. This just proves that while death is indiscriminatory,

it is also random and ironic.

Although death is the most traumatic aspect of war, something just as

traumatic is the loss of one's innocence. That moment when a man realizes that he is

not an innocent child anymore is often devastating. And so it is for Baumer. He

realizes he has become immune to the violence and the bloodshed. The best example

of this is when he realizes that most of his friends are dead, and he doesn't feel bad

about it at all. Another example of this is when he and his friends go and visit the

French girls. They realize that the girls are so hungry, that they would do anything

for food. But the loss of innocence is not a constant pain, homesickness is.

The longing for ones home and family can often be unbearable. This is

especially true for soldiers. The pain may be so intense that a simple tree can set it

off, making a soldier just take off. So it was with Detering, already broken up about

the death of the horses, a simple cherry tree was enough to set him off. Some men's

homesickness passes, and this is even worse. For Paul to go home, and realize that

he wished he hadn't was shocking to him. But for other men, home is all they can

think of. Kemmerich, lying on a bed, with an amputated foot could only think of

his mother.

But as bad as all these may appear, I am not able to describe to you the full

range of emotions and trials that men in war have. They are subjected to a brutal

facet of civilization, war. And they have just as many emotions as other men, which

is what makes war so hard.