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
The Essay on Civil War Soldiers Men Doctors
... combated, was the angel of death for many a fine soldier. This creeping death that came was inescapable and ... most camps, and the soldiers paid the price for their ignorance. The men were usually either too ... This practice allowed thousands of ill and frail men to enter the military, and bring with ... Dysentery", or most accurately "the shits" killed more men than all the bullets fired in the war. Over ...
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.
