Its Remembrance Sunday today. A time when we all remember "The Fallen" from the many Wars.
How fitting that I should blog that I finally finished reading All Quiet on the Western Front. Yes it took me a long time to even start to read it. But I did and I am so glad I did.
For the last few months, I have been totally transported to the hellish, bloody, death-ridden battle fields and trenches of World War 1 France. Clinging onto every morsel of life, every strand of survival with our young Narrator Paul. Whether on the train back to Suffolk or on the Circle Line to Westminster, I was there, transfixed, mesmorised, hopeful... teary.
We live the story out through the eyes of a young German Soldier, Paul. His early youthful optimism turns to auto pilot enermy killing machine and savagery. Unhopeful for any future for himself. All he must do is survive the bloodbath Hell before him.
"We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war."
You cannot help but feel deep compassion for this young soldier. I remember when I was 18. Ready to face the adult world; full of hope, full of wonder, full of laughter. Enthusiasm that new no bounds. But it's so far removed and alien from Paul's soldier life. Destruction. Desolation. Death. Witness to the unimaginable horrors of war.
The final chapter is perhaps the most sad. Unfortunatley I read it as I sat on the Circle Line Tube. Throughout the book, young Paul merely survives each day, knowing he will die soon. He has no hope. How ironic that he should for the first time since the war show the first glimmers of hope towards the end.
As I read, my eyes welled up. Reaching for a tissue, I made out that I was having one of those got something in my eye moments. I think I got away with it. But the effect of deep, deep saddness would stay with me for a long while.
"He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."
How fitting that I should blog that I finally finished reading All Quiet on the Western Front. Yes it took me a long time to even start to read it. But I did and I am so glad I did.
For the last few months, I have been totally transported to the hellish, bloody, death-ridden battle fields and trenches of World War 1 France. Clinging onto every morsel of life, every strand of survival with our young Narrator Paul. Whether on the train back to Suffolk or on the Circle Line to Westminster, I was there, transfixed, mesmorised, hopeful... teary.
We live the story out through the eyes of a young German Soldier, Paul. His early youthful optimism turns to auto pilot enermy killing machine and savagery. Unhopeful for any future for himself. All he must do is survive the bloodbath Hell before him.
"We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war."
You cannot help but feel deep compassion for this young soldier. I remember when I was 18. Ready to face the adult world; full of hope, full of wonder, full of laughter. Enthusiasm that new no bounds. But it's so far removed and alien from Paul's soldier life. Destruction. Desolation. Death. Witness to the unimaginable horrors of war.
The final chapter is perhaps the most sad. Unfortunatley I read it as I sat on the Circle Line Tube. Throughout the book, young Paul merely survives each day, knowing he will die soon. He has no hope. How ironic that he should for the first time since the war show the first glimmers of hope towards the end.
As I read, my eyes welled up. Reaching for a tissue, I made out that I was having one of those got something in my eye moments. I think I got away with it. But the effect of deep, deep saddness would stay with me for a long while.
"He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."
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