Conversation:

As I high school student, I found WWI to be totally uncomprehensible. All this carnage made no sense at all to me and I lived in fear that the teacher would ask us to explain the 'causes' and apart from weird Balkan politics and odd defense treaties that made some countries allies, nothing made much sense. When I read 'All Quiet on the Western Front' I was truly horrified. There is no way that anyone could have been prepared for all the awful conditions and the madness. Thank you for sharing this. As horrible as this is, I think anyone involved should have been revered. Much of the modern warfare is 'clean' in comparison---especially those remote control drones guided by people in a different hemisphere from cubicles. Thank you for sharing this, I wish all the current policy makers would read stories like these and not get their citizens involved in such.