The readings from “All Quiet on the Western Front” and the WWI prose excerpts by Herbert, Chevallier, Barthas, and West offer an unsettling portrayal of the soldiers’ living conditions in the trenches. Reading about the soldiers’ desperate desire to escape their suffering, shown in Chevallier’s novel excerpt, Fear: “Death would be preferable to this degrading torment… Yes, if this must continue much longer, I would rather die,” or the thought that just in a few moments some men will be ripped apart, and become objects of horror or indifference was extremely painful and disturbing. The images of men rotting in filth, worse than animals, were also deeply unsettling.
One excerpt that left me completely astonished was the scene where a soldier, feeling a sudden sense of well-being, raises his head above the parapet, only to be instantly struck by a bullet. This moment perfectly encapsulates how brutal and unfair war can be. Even the smallest gestures of life or hope can be crushed immediately.
Personally, the part that had me most heartbroken was a passage from Chevallier’s novel excerpt, where he recounts the thoughts and visions that would flash through his mind “like a lightning bolt.” He writes: “There, in my distant home, my cherished wife, my two babes with blond curls, my white-haired mother and father, kneeling at prayer at this very hour, pouring all their hearts, souls into it, bent in anguish for the absent one… for me. No, I had to escape death as best I could, to get away from this accursed place.” Reading this was incredibly painful because it shows how the love for their families would always linger in the soldiers’ minds. The desire to survive wasn’t just for their own sake but for the sake of those waiting for them back home.
While reading these stories, I tried hard to put myself in the soldiers’ shoes, but the extent of their suffering is impossible to imagine. No pen could ever tell their tale.