World War I was a conflict that claimed the lives of millions of soldiers and altered the lives of countless others. Shortly after the War, two novels surfaced, Generals Die In Bed by Charles Yale Harrison and All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, that became influential in our understanding of how the soldiers lived. Each novel provides a firsthand account from a soldier’s point of view on one of the most brutal wars ever to have been fought. The novels portray war without the common popular veils of patriotism and heroism. General Douglas MacArthur stated “The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war”.
The novel Generals Die In Bed is the story of an unnamed eighteen year old boy in the Canadian infantry stationed on the frontline. It presents an honest view of the everyday life of a Canadian soldier …show more content…
Generals Die in Bed brought this to life, “It is 4:00 and it is a full hour before we will get our hunk of gray war bread dipped in bacon grease and a mess-tin full of pale unsweetened tea”. The exhaustion the soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front is clear when he simply states “we are weary to death”.
Another illustration of a World War I soldier’s life is a quote from John McCrae, a surgeon and the author of the poem In Flanders Fields, as describes the conditions of a field hospital during the Second Battle of Ypres, he writes as follows:
The general impression in my mind is of a nightmare. We have been in the most bitter of fights. For seventeen days and seventeen nights none of us have had our clothes off nor our boots even, except occasionally. In all that time while I was awake gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty seconds… And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give
The novel Generals Die In Bed is the story of an unnamed eighteen year old boy in the Canadian infantry stationed on the frontline. It presents an honest view of the everyday life of a Canadian soldier …show more content…
Generals Die in Bed brought this to life, “It is 4:00 and it is a full hour before we will get our hunk of gray war bread dipped in bacon grease and a mess-tin full of pale unsweetened tea”. The exhaustion the soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front is clear when he simply states “we are weary to death”.
Another illustration of a World War I soldier’s life is a quote from John McCrae, a surgeon and the author of the poem In Flanders Fields, as describes the conditions of a field hospital during the Second Battle of Ypres, he writes as follows:
The general impression in my mind is of a nightmare. We have been in the most bitter of fights. For seventeen days and seventeen nights none of us have had our clothes off nor our boots even, except occasionally. In all that time while I was awake gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty seconds… And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give