This classic novel of the First World War is written in the first person by a young German soldier, Paul Bauer. Only eighteen when he is pressured by his family, friends and society to enlist and fight at the front, he enters the army with six school friends, each filled with optimistic and patriotic thoughts. Within a few months they are all old men, in mind if not completely in body. They witness such horrors, and endure such severe hardship and suffering, that they are unable to even speak about it to anyone but each other. The 1930 film adaptation won two Academy Awards. This edition is translated, with an Afterword, by Brian Murdoch, Professor of German at Stirling University.