The novel opens as the narrator describes his current life on the front lines of World War I. They have eaten well for the first time in a long while and have also received a large amount of cigars and cigarettes. The narrator notes that this windfall of food to the fact that half of the men in his platoon were killed in combat the previous day, though they can still hear bombs from the front lines in the distance. The soldiers begin to lose track of days and weeks, counting time only by season and time spent at the front.
So for me, I do think that being in a war is dreadful because I might not get enough food or food that is delicious. And being in the horrible front line with all these barbed wire, gun fire, explosion the smell of dead and rotten bodies… oh I just don’t even want to think about it. It is just too horrible like a living hell…
I have never expected that in the last chapter everyone except Tjaden had died including our main character-Paul. I had never expected that this book was going to have a sad ending. As all of the books I have read before the main character had never died before so I was astonished by the ending of how almost everyone who was introduced and described had died. I was very depressed when I had finished the book.
After all I would recommend this book to others if they want to know the life of being in an army or people who would like to know more about World War one. But if you are the kind of person that would cry in a movie I definitely would not recommend this book.