That Is The Remarkable Thing

The Storm Lashes Us, Out Of The Confusion Of Grey And Yellow The Hail Of Splinters Whips Forth The Childlike Cries Of The Wounded, And In The Night Shattered Life Groans Painfully Into Silence. Our Hands Are Earth, Our Bodies Clay And Our Eyes Pools Of Rain. We Do Not Know Whether We Are Still Alive.

We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces.

Give 'em All The Same Grub And All The Same Pay/and The War Would Be Over And Done In A Day." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 3

I Am Young, I Am Twenty Years Old; Yet I Know Nothing Of Life But Despair, Death, Fear, And Fatuous Superficiality Cast Over An Abyss Of Sorrow. I See How Peoples Are Set Against One Another, And In Silence, Unknowingly, Foolishly, Obediently, Innocently Slay One Another.

And Even If These Scenes From Our Youth Were Given Back To Us We Would Hardly Know What To Do. The Tender, Secret Influence That Passed From Them Into Us Could Not Rise Again. We Might Be Amongst Them And Move In Them; We Might Remember And Love Them And Be Stirred By The Sight Of Them. But It Would Be Like Gazing At The Photograph Of A Dead Comrade; Those Are His Features, It Is His Face, And The Days We Spent Together Take On A Mournful Life In The Memory; But The Man Himself It Is Not.