War should not be brought upon any country or of any person. People join thinking they are doing something right for the country of that they are fighting for, but the problem is that no one really knows or feels what it is like in war and bloodshed. It's horrifying for anyone of any age, so I"ll tell you. You sit in a trench most of the time trusting people around you to cover you while you sit there to catch a breath from the day before. People on the battlefield lay dead with cold bloody bodies around them. Your tired to the point of death, but you can"t stop for one second knowing that at one moment the enemy will come flooding over the trench trying to kill as many Germans as they can.
My name is Paul Baumer and I am a soldier of the German army in WW1. I can say one soldier told me one time shortly before he died that, "there is no escape anywhere." I figured out what he meant when I first encountered war. Machine guns were first used then so the amount of dead was enormous. I saw waves of company's slaughtered within seconds, body parts everywhere, and blood red water and land. I regret ever enlisting in the war. I don"t care what side you fight on; they"re both a big amount of people trying to kill each other for the same reason and that is domination over each other. I never knew that enlisting in the war would ever destroy and tear apart my life. I have nothing to do or look forward to doing now that I experienced the biggest event of my life. I was only eighteen when I joined the army. I was ready to become a soldier because my schoolteacher urged me. I didn"t even know what was about to happen to my life. Once you"re in the war you can"t get out.
I regret ever killing that French soldier because he as well as anyone should have lived their life to the fullest. To this day I feel sorry and saddened at the fact that I should have gone down with the rest of everyone in my company.
