Armistice Day

Published on by Margaret

I’m currently reading All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. So it seems appropriate today on 90th anniversary of the end of World War 1, with the cease fire on the Western Front, to quote from this book:

The horror of the front fades away when you turn your back on it, so we can attack it with coarse or black humour. When someone is dead we say he’s ‘pushing up the daisies’, and we talk about everything the same way, to save ourselves from going mad; as long as we can take things like that we are actually fighting back.

But we do not forget. All that stuff in the war issues of the papers about the wonderful cheeriness of the troops, who start arranging little tea-dances the minute they get back from being under fire in the line, is complete rubbish. It isn’t because we are cheerful we make jokes, it’s just that we keep cheerful because if we didn’t, we’d be done for. All the same, it can’t hold all that much longer – the jokes get more bitter with ever month that passes. …

The days, the weeks, the years spent out here will come back to us again, and our dead comrades in arms will rise again and march with us, our heads will be clear and we will have an aim in life, and with our dead comrades beside us and the years we spent in the line behind us we shall march forward – but against whom, against whom?

Remarque’s story of German soldiers in the trenches vividly portrays the horror and futility of war.

5 thoughts on “Armistice Day”

  1. I remember reading this back in high school and loved it. It was the first book I had read where I thought the reality of war was portrayed very well. From the scary/terror to the mundane.

    Like

  2. The passage is so eloquent. I have never read this book. My Grandfather was among the soldiers in the tranches and was a POW. It so happened that he was also in the WW2 fighting and was also taken prisonner at that time. I think that you gave me the perfect book to read so I can get closer to what my Grandfather experienced. He died when I was too young to have learn from him what happened but I have wonderful pictures of him in his uniform among his comrades where he looks so young, handsom and full of strength. Thank you Margaret.

    Like

  3. I finished it a couple of days ago and am still thinking about it. Partly due, I think, to the various programmes the BBC have been showing which, apart from Jo Brand’s Vera Britain doc. fiasco (timing changed at the last minute), have all been brilliant and very touching. Am so glad I’ve now read All Quiet on the Western Front though. It’s an amazing book.

    Like

  4. Amanda, I don’t often read books about war, but I’ve been thinking of reading this one for some time. It does portray the reality of war alarmingly well.
    Roxane, when you relate war to people you know it makes it even more harrowing to read about what they suffered.
    Cath, I missed Jo Brand’s programme. I hope they repeat it.

    Like

Comments are closed.