The Power of One Book
Like Paul Baumer, the fictional main character of All Quiet on the Western Front, I was nineteen years old when I served in combat. Somehow I had wandered through a formal literary education in a middle class public school, developed a strong interest in classic film, and fought in a foreign war without knowing who Paul Baumer was. It is a shame that much of the civilized world no longer knows his story.
I would not read Paul Baumer's story as told in All Quiet On the Western Front, which is the cathartic reflections of World War I veteran and author, Erich Maria Remarque, until the age of twenty-one.
Paul could have been my buddy in Fallujah, Iraq. Under a torrent of enemy bombardment we might have nestled into the ground together like children in our mother’s chests, pleading for survival. We might have manned a machine-gun together, our bodies becoming automatons as we performed the training conditioned within us. We might have stayed up late nights conversing about the torment of war, the malnutrition, the angst of low-standing in military hierarchy – anything but the deaths of our peers and brethren.
Paul was not with me in Iraq. I was not with him in Europe. But like all stories, inspired of men who fought in war, we were ideologically linked. We did serve together. Blades have become bullets, catapults into cannons, shields into bullet-proof plates; the soldier has remained the same. The psychology of men who are dutifully tasked into the killing of other men or direct support of such cause will never change.
I am glad Paul and I got to know each other when we did. My return stateside from near daily rocket and mortar attacks, deadly roadside bombings, and the pervasive threat of death from snipers, was not a happy reunion. How does one remember to walk in an open field again and be gallant and without fear? How does one turn off a paranoid, high-intensity force within them that once guided their survival? How does one forget the faces of those that did not return and wear a smile again? How does one relate these feelings to those that did not dutifully serve?
I needed Paul. He was introduced to me by a good friend who knew of my plight.
"Take this," my good friend said after one of our drunken conversations. "Go home, and start reading it tomorrow."
Paul became my counselor and friend from the very first words he said to me. "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." Paul's words were a symphony of sympathy to my burdened spirit.
We became best friends that day. I listened to his entire story.
We shared a morbid humor, one that only men who lived such lives could have. We laughed heartily and reflectively. We were unabashed to share things about ourselves with one another.
That day, we looked at each other with silent stares, our arms curled over our skulls, in prone positions on the ground as bombs fell over us. We boozed together and talked of death as our inhibitions waned.
We held hands as we returned home on a sojourn which felt like staying in an alien world. We shared ammo, food, and cigarettes. We did serve together, that day.
On my couch where I had not moved since I first listened to Paul, and the sunlight dissipated outside my patio window, I cried at the news of Paul's death. He was my best friend. He was me. He was my friends who did not make it back. He was every soldier who had ever served. I am glad I am alive to tell his story to anyone who needs to hear it – it is my new duty.
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