All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

At regular intervals we ram in the iron stakes. Two men hold a roll and the others spool off the barbed wire. It is that awful stuff with close-set, long spikes. I am not used to unrolling it and tear my hand.

officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us. And

Shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks—shattering, corroding, death. Dysentery, influenza, typhus—scalding, choking, death.

Trenches, hospitals, the common grave—there are no other possibilities.

The months pass by. The summer of 1918 is the most bloody and the most terrible.