Expression of the Opposing Sides in All Quiet On The Western Front by Remarque and Generals Die in Bed by Harrison

All Quiet On The Western Front is the German side and The Generals Die In Bed is the Allied side.

The story of All Quiet On The Western Front centers on a young teenager, Paul Baumer the 19 year old German together with his 4 other classmates is persuaded to volunteer for the German army by enlisting at the beginning of World War I and find themselves fighting in the French warfare. The story is told entirely through the experiences of the young German recruits and highlights the tragedy of war through the eyes of an individual, Paul. Erich Maria Remarque creates the world of the ordinary German soldier in the Great War, spanning around late 1916 to just before the armistice of November 11th, 1918. It is a world of slaughter by gas burning ones lungs, by mortar shells tearing ones body apart, by bayonet and with wounded men caught on barbed wire, as well as hundreds of thousands dying of their wounds in the inadequate field hospitals where ruthless orderlies are in charge.

As the boys witness death and mutilation all around them, any preconceived notion about the indoctrination, "the enemy" and the "rights and wrongs" of the conflict disappear, leaving them angry and perplexed. The story is not about heroism but about toil and futility and the divide between the idea of war and the real life and its values. The selected passages are full of violence and death and loss and a kind of perpetual suffering and terror that most of us have never and hopefully will never experience. Both authors ability to place the reader right there on the front line with the main character so vividly, not just in terms of what he physically experienced and witnessed All the complicated, intense and often completely numbed emotions that came along...

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...h narrators see more horror than they could imagine was possible. Each day is quite likely to be their last and they are under no illusions what sort of horrific death could be lurking over the top of the next attack.

This isn't exactly like one of your swaggering tale of conquer and triumph that is so often sought by the people who think war is thrilling rather it actually unveils all the dirt and forlorn that takes place behind the scene that makes it all the more ugly as condemnable. It is really hard not to relate to this book as the horror which it unleashes is still a part of our lives. The play of death and chance

A certain matter-of-fact quality pervades the descriptions of the wounds inflicted and received by soldiers; the face-to-face attacks with rifle butts, spades, and grenades; the sounds, smells, and colors of death and dying in this book.