You Take It From Me, We Are

This Book Is To Be Neither An Accusation Nor A Confession, And Least Of All An Adventure, For Death Is Not An Adventure To Those Who Stand Face To Face With It. It Will Try Simply To Tell Of A Generation Of Men Who, Even Though They May Have Escaped Shells, Were Destroyed By The War.

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.

We March Up, Moody Or Good-tempered Soldiers - We Reach The Zone Where The Front Begins And Become On The Instant Human Animals.

Katczinsky Says It Is All To Do With Education - It Softens The Brain.

But Probably That's The Way Of The World - When We Have Finally Learned Something We're Too Old To Apply It - And So It Goes, Wave After Wave, Generation After Generation. No One Learns Anything At All From Anyone Else.