Just a few days ago I was waiting at the trainstation for a train to arrive. When I looked down on the tracks I noticed a fat rat’s upper half, the rat was cut in half by the passing of a previous train. I suddenly experienced a flashback, and there I was, down in the trenches, looking at bodies the way Paul described them, this time the result of the surprisingly devastating force of an artillery barrage. I remembered the rats also, grown fat by the rotting bodies lying in no-mans land. It’s impossible to have a flashback of something you havent experienced. Still, the images felt real. So was the loneliness and the fear when I joined him at that cold dark night stuck in no-mans land, playing for dead, hoping his buddies will be in time to save him, afraid to raise his head, holding tight to dear earth, hoping to survive another day. This sums up the force of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. I wasn’t there, all I saw was a glimpse of the tragedy, but it was enough for me to be very glad I could end it all by closing the book.
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