Sean McCroskey

Writing 101 Neuschel

3/28/2014
1

Survival on the Western Front
From 1928-1930, the volume of literature and drama produced on World War I increased
dramatically, following an initial 10 year post-war interlude from 1918-1928, during which very little
material was produced on the war. During that time, publishers believed that the war wouldnt sell.
As historian Modris Eksteins said of that period, in general, the memory of the war was too painful.
Moreover the task after the war, it was felt, was not to wallow in the tragedy but to build a better
future.
1
However, by 1928 it seemed that part of being able to build a better future would involve
remembering, and especially criticizing, the war, and from 1928-1930 a slew of war novels were
published, some celebrating and others condemning it. These authors sought to depict the soldiers
view in order to give as authentic an account of the war as possible.
Soldiers believed that their accounts carried a greater weight of authority than those of
historians because they were actually present during the war. Many soldiers believed that when an
historian recounts the 1,120,000 casualties of the Somme Offensive
2
, there is something ineffable lost
in the description of the war. Oftentimes soldiers found accounts by veterans to be much closer to
their own experience of the war. For example, take the writings of Wilfred Owen, who wrote in
Dulce et Decorum Est:
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
3


1
Modris Eksteins, The Rites of Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 346.
2
Susan R. Grayzel, The First World War: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedfords/St. Martins,
2013), 26.
3
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est, The War Poetry Website, date accessed: 3/22/2014,
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html.
Sean McCroskey
Writing 101 Neuschel
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2

Accounts like these became incredibly popular and well-known as they seemed to better capture the
war that soldiers actually experienced than did the sterile summaries of casualties from historians. In
fact, many soldiers of the war felt that the man who has not understood with his flesh cannot talk to
you about [the war],
4
and they argued that the war could not be conveyed, only experienced. Some
scholars call this idea, flesh-witnessing,
5
and it implies that even accounts written by veterans will
truly fail to convey the essence of the war if it can only be experienced. Thus, when reading accounts
written by veterans, what is important to their telling is not necessarily the facts of the war, for
soldiers accounts were often wildly various,
6
but the themes and motifs that pervade the novels, the
imagery that captures the war in the eyes of that soldier.
The war did not affect each soldier the same way, and even soldiers witnessing the same event
could retell that moment in very different ways ten years later. Because of this, one might expect
novels written by soldiers to be markedly different from one another. In some ways this is true,
soldiers accounts had their own unique interpretation of many different events. However, there are
also some striking similarities between novels, even between authors on different sides during the
war. For example, Frederick Manning and Erich Maria Remarque are two authors whose accounts
portray the soldiers struggle for survival on the Western Front with remarkable similarity. The fact
that there are certain aspects of the war experience that were treated almost identically between
authors suggests that there were certain characteristics of the war experience, or at least the
experience of the Western Front, that were nearly universal. The soldiers struggle for survival, and

4
Yuval Noah Harari, Scholars, Eyewitnesses, and Flesh-Witnesses of War: A Tense Relationship, Journal of
Literature and the History of Ideas 7, no. 2 (2009): 215, citing Samuel Hynes, The Soldiers Tale: Bearing Witness
to Modern War (London: Allen Lane, 1998), 2.
5
Yuval Noah Harari, Scholars, Eyewitnesses, and Flesh-Witnesses of War: A Tense Relationship, Journal of
Literature and the History of Ideas 7, no. 2 (2009): 218.
6
Yuval Noah Harari, Scholars, Eyewitnesses, and Flesh-Witnesses of War: A Tense Relationship, Journal of
Literature and the History of Ideas 7, no. 2 (2009): 216 citing, Jean de Saulx-Tavannes, Mmoires de tres-noble et
tres-illustre Gaspard de Saulx, seigneur de Tavannes, Nouvelle collection des mmoires pour servir lhistoire de
France, depuis le XIII
e
sicle jusqu la fin du XVIII
e
1, no. 8 (Paris: 1838) ed. Joseph Franois Michaud and Jean Joseph
Poujoulat.: Lditeur du commentaire analytique du code civil, pp. 1504.
Sean McCroskey
Writing 101 Neuschel
3/28/2014
3

especially the psychological and emotional aspects of that struggle, was one such facet of the war
experience.
In the German born Erich Maria Remarques, All Quiet on the Western Front, and in the Australian
born Frederick Mannings, Her Privates We, both authors document an individual Privates struggle
for survival during the war. Erich Remarques novel follows Paul Baumer, a German private, and some
of his closest friends. Her Privates We follows Private Borne, a British soldier, and his closest friends.
Both Privates live what is more or less the average life for soldiers on the Western Front, and both
are concerned primarily, among many other things, with surviving the war. There are three primary
strategies soldiers used to cope with the war which both Manning and Remarque illustrate in their
novels. Paul Baumer states them almost explicitly near his own death:
The menace of death;-- it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the
weapon of instinct--it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the
horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought--it has awakened in us the
sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude
7


Both Frederick Manning and Erich Remarque show how mans transformation into animal, and the
cyclical nature of this transition between man and beast, as well as the support of comrades against
isolation all served to help the soldier survive the war. Reflections by other survivors of the war also
support Remarques and Mannings characterization of the soldiers experience.
In his epigraph, Frederick Manning writes that war is waged by men; not by beasts or by gods. It
is a peculiarly human activity.
8
He implies that the horrors of war are really the horrors of man.
However, Borne, the central character of Frederich Mannings novel, goes on to clarify this statement
by saying, There is nothing in war which is not also in human nature; but the violence and passions of
men become, in the aggregate, an impersonal and incalculable force which one can only endure.
9

Both Frederick Manning and Erich Remarque illustrate a number of ways that the soldier might

7
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 143.
8
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 6.
9
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 107.
Sean McCroskey
Writing 101 Neuschel
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endure such an impersonal destructive force. One of which is by giving up that very humanity
Frederick Manning sees in war.
Paul Baumer, the central character of All Quiet on the Western Front, says that, We turn into
animals when we go up the line, because that is the only thing which brings us through safely,
10
and
one scholar similarly commented that, it seems that the price of heroism and survival was
degradation.
11
Borne too experiences this devolution from his human state as he is in the midst of
battle. Frederick Manning says that, only the instincts of the beast survived in [Borne], every sense
was alert and in that tension was some poignancy.
12
Why was degradation into something lower,
something animal, able to save a man under fire? Baumer speculates that terror kills, if a man
thinks about it,
13
suggesting that the fear of the moment was something too great to handle. A man
in complete control of his senses and fully able to comprehend what is going on around him is ill
equipped to handle the war in its entirety. Captain Liddell Hart, an officer in the war, comments that
the way to endurance lay primarily in deadening reflection with action.
14
Instead of thinking about
the battle or the terror, a soldier must act. In essence, the movement from man into animal was a
defensive strategy to help protect the soldiers fragile humanity.
Life on the front was a cycle of battle and rest, a period of intense action followed by periods of
respite. In the same way, men would cycle between being men and beasts as the occasion warranted.
Father Agostino Gemelli, an Italian chaplain during the war, said that soldiers lost their individual
personality and ceased to be men for the duration of the action. When it was over and they
returned to the line, they broke into tears or collapsed. Another change had taken place: human

10
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 73.
11
Alfredo Bonadeo, War and Degradation: Gleanings from the Literature of the Great War, Comparative
Literature Studies 21, no. 4 (Winter, 1984): 409.
12
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 19.
13
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 73.
14
Alfredo Bonadeo, War and Degradation: Gleanings from the Literature of the Great War, Comparative
Literature Studies 21, no. 4 (Winter, 1984): 411 citing The Liddell Hart Memoirs 1895-1938 (New York: 1965), 17.
Sean McCroskey
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nature took over again.
15
One scholar notes a cyclical structure in Erich Remarques novel that
adheres to this pattern of battle followed by rest followed by battle.
16
The novel opens in the middle
of heavy fighting, and it is followed by a period of rest all the way through chapter 6. However, with
chapter 7 the cycle begins again, with intense fighting again followed by rest until the final chapter of
the novel where there is again fighting. Frederick Manning too structured the plot of his novel
similarly, opening the story as Borne enjoys a period of rest which followed a traumatic battle
experience. This cycle continues throughout the novel until Bornes death.
This cycle is not just a coincidence; these periods of rest are as fundamental a part of the war
experience as were the times in the trenches. One scholar noted that the foremost characteristic of
*Mannings+ novel is its balance. There is fighting, but there are also long periods without it.
17
This
balance reflects the soldiers attempts to balance their lives between fighting and resting, between
being animal and human. Thus, the counterpoint to much of the fighting is a focus on the creature
comforts of living: But our comrades are dead and who knows what is waiting us? We will make
ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies and drink and
smoke so that the hours are not wasted. Life is short,
18
says Baumer immediately after a battle.
Frederick Manning also shows this renewal of humanity as he describes Borne and the other privates
waking up after they had been pulled back from the front lines: Gradually their apathy cleared and
lifted, as first their bodily functions and then their habits of life reasserted themselves. One after
another, they started shaving.
19
Notice the stages that Mannings Privates move through while

15
Agostino Gemelli, Il nostro soldato. Saggi di psicologia militare (Milan, 1917) cited in Alfredo Bonadeo,
War and Degradation: Gleanings from the Literature of the Great War, Comparative Literature Studies 21, no.
4 (Winter, 1984): 411.
16
Brian A. Rowley, Journalism in Fiction: Im Westen nichts Neues, in The First World War in Fiction 1976,
ed. Holger Klein (London: Macmillan Press, 1976), 109.
17
Holger Klein, In the Midst of Beastliness: Concepts and Ideals in Mannings Her Privates We, Journal of
Commonwealth Literature 12, no. 2 (1977): 140.
18
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 73-74.
19
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 25.
Sean McCroskey
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awakening; their dullness, as Borne calls it, clears first, then their primitive animal functions return,
eventually followed by the activities of man. The men need periods away from the direct reality of
the trenches, they cannot be animals all the time. While their spells of beastliness serve a purpose,
the men need cycles of rest away from the war combat in order to survive it.
Unfortunately, while this cycle helps the men survive, it is difficult to maintain, and those who fail
to do so are those who break. Bornes superior officer, Mr. Clinton says that if our luck holds, well
keep moving out of one bloody misery into the next, until we break, see, until we break.
20
Indeed
many soldiers in the novels are not able to sustain this cycle, especially not in the face of a seemingly
endless war, and both novels illustrate the consequences. During Baumers final battle, he witnesses
one of the recruits cracking under the stress of the prolonged bombardment; The first recruit seems
actually to have gone insane. He butts his head against the wall like a goat.
21
In the case of this
recruit, who was not the only victim of stress during that battle, the strain of being holed up within a
trench for literally days on end without food drove him over the edge. His cycle was interrupted by an
extended period of fighting, and he was still too green to handle it. Similarly, Borne awakens one
night to a nightmare, only to find that the obscure disquiet passed from one to another, teeth
met grinding as jaws worked, there were little whimperings which quickened into sobs, passed into
long shuddering moans, or culminated in angry, half-articulate obscenities.
22
This experience is well
documented among actual soldiers, and one scholar perfectly articulated Bornes very experience
when he said, once out of danger, traumatic episodes could return to haunt soldiers as memories or
nightmares, despite a determination to avoid thinking of painful events.
23
Soldiers had to struggle to
create separation between periods of fighting and rest, and thus to maintain the cycle that both

20
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 15.
21
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 58.
22
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 16-17.
23
Alex Watson, Self-Deception and Survival: Mental Coping Strategies on the Western Front, 1914-1918,
Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 2 (April, 2006), 253.
Sean McCroskey
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Remarque and Manning highlight in their novels. Those who failed to do so could end up as those
recruits in the trench with Baumer.
Part of what made the destructive nature of the war so nefarious was that it broke down the
soldier in such a wide variety of ways. As Erich Remarque and Frederick Manning show, the war was
inherently dehumanizing, causing men to turn into animals. But the war was also dehumanizing in
another sense; it was also a destructive force on an individuals personality. Baumer notes that the
war required a renunciation of personality such as one would not ask of the meanest servants.
24

This erosion of personality left the men feeling displaced and isolated even among each other. Borne
describes the men on the line as mere automatons, whose only life was still in England. He felt
curiously isolated even from them. Frederick Manning says of Borne that he felt like an alien among
*the men+, and he did not seek company, but solitude.
25
Borne was so displaced and isolated from
the other men that solitude was more comforting than company. Borne repeatedly seeks out solitude
and isolation throughout the novel, and his habit illustrates the interesting way in which Frederick
Manner portrays the individual.
Frederick Manning repeatedly shows men to be, even without the wars influence, inherently
isolated from one another. He illustrates in his novel that each man is in some way unknowable to all
others. Borne reflects this sentiment when he muses that, men hold within themselves the mystery
which makes everything mysterious.
26
The men were thrown into proximity with each other by the
war, but however familiar they became with each other, each man had thoughts not to be spoken,
secrets to be preserved, a core mystery.
27
By repeatedly emphasizing mans inherent isolation from
one another, Frederick Manning is attempting to show how the war further aggravated that sense of
isolation until it became a destructive force. One powerful example of this comes when Borne

24
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 12.
25
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 58.
26
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 176.
27
Jonathan Marwil, A Lost Classic, The American Scholar 60, no. 4 (1991), 605.
Sean McCroskey
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overhears a conversation between his close friend, Martlow, and his comrade Pritchard. Martlow and
Pritchard are discussing the death of Pritchards bed chum when Borne overhears, Well, anyway,
said Martlow, desperately comforting: e couldnt ave felt much, could e, if e said that? I dont
know what e felt, said Pritchard, with slowly filling bitterness, I know what I felt.
28
Pritchard
realizes here that even though he loved his friend, he did not know him, there was still mystery to him.
By killing his friend, the war has shoved this knowledge into Pritchards face, forcing to confront the
distance between them.
Erich Remarque also illustrates the inherent distance between men. When Paul is posted as a
guard for the Russian prisoners of war, he notices that they look just as kindly as our own peasants.
Paul begins to recognize a hint of common humanity they might share.
29
However, he then says, I
know nothing of them except that they are prisoners; that is exactly what troubles me - if I could
know more of them then my emotions might become sympathy. But as it is I perceive behind
them only the suffering of the creature.
30
Paul begins, just for a moment, to break through that
isolation that separates him and the prisoners, but in the end he only able to sense the suffering of a
something that he cannot understand. The prisoners remain foreign and incomprehensible to him.
What Remarque shows in this scene, and what Manning implies again and again throughout his novel,
is that man is always, not just during times of war, separate and isolated from one another. One way
the war destroys the individual is by exacerbating mans inherent solitude, forcing men into conflict
and confrontation with the strangeness of other men.

28
Jonathan Marwil, A Lost Classic, The American Scholar 60, no. 4 (1991), 605 citing Frederick Manning,
Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 26.
29
Richard Middleton-Kaplan, Facing the Face of the Enemy: Levinasian Moments in All Quiet on the
Western Front and the Literature of War, Modern Fiction Studies 54, no. 1 (Spring, 2008), 79.
30
Richard Middleton-Kaplan, Facing the Face of the Enemy: Levinasian Moments in All Quiet on the
Western Front and the Literature of War, Modern Fiction Studies 54, no. 1 (Spring, 2008), 79 citing Erich Maria
Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 102.

Sean McCroskey
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The soldiers remedy for this isolation, their defense against the erosion of individuality, is their
sense of comradeship with one another. Both Frederick Manning and Erich Remarque highlight the
importance of comradeship in their novels; as one scholar notes, Frederick Manning especially
admired how the soldiers willingness to go on and their compassion for each other lifted *the
soldiers] above all defects, even of their own nature.
31
When Baumer recounts his difficult time as a
recruit he says that by far the most important result was that it awakened the finest thing that
arose out of the war comradeship.
32
The longer the war went on, the more important this sense of
comradeship became. Author and veteran, Siegfried Sassoon, comments on this very phenomenon;
when he is faced with battle and the loss of the humanities that give meaning to his life, all
Sassoon believes in is the battalion spirit sharing his life with the officers and the troops, and
gaining their respect and affection.
33
As the war grew longer, the mens individual purpose was
eroded, causing the importance of their communal bond to grow.
Both Frederick Manning and Erich Remarque note that the presence of death enhances the
soldiers feelings of comradeship significantly. Baumer calls his relationship with the other men a
great brotherhood, saying it is a feeling that has something of the desperate loyalty to one another
of men condemned to death.
34
The men are united in that they are all bound up in a struggle against
death. When Paul Baumer watches his friend, Kemmerich, die, Paul says of Kemmerich that he is
entirely alone now with his little life of nineteen years, and cries because it leaves him.
35
Death is
something that can only be experienced, never conveyed, and so when men are faced with death
they are at their most isolated. Mans only defense against this ultimate isolation, then, lies in each

31
Jonathan Marwil, A Lost Classic, The American Scholar 60, no. 4 (1991), 605.
32
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 15.
33
Alfredo Bonadeo, War and Degradation: Gleanings from the Literature of the Great War, Comparative
Literature Studies 21, no. 4 (Winter, 1984): 415 citing Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, in The
Memoirs of George Sherston (New York, 1937), 148.

34
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 142.
35
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Continuum, 2004), 16.
Sean McCroskey
Writing 101 Neuschel
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other, as Borne realizes when he says that one cannot hurry, alone, into nowhere, into nothing.
36

The nothingness of death can only be faced together. In an often quoted line, Borne says that every
private soldier is, a man at arms against the world, a man fighting desperately for himself, and
conscious that, in the last resort, he stood alone; for such self-reliance lies at the very heart of
comradeship.
37
Borne means by this statement that each man is fighting for himself, but in that all
the soldiers are united. They are all confronted by the nothingness of death, and this common
obstacle forms the basis of their comradeship. As Borne says, the men cannot face death alone, and
so their comradeship becomes necessary to their survival.
The soldiers subjected to the horrors and tribulations of World War I were placed in a struggle for
survival that was inarguably one-sided. Soldiers had to survive the physical dangers, including shells,
guns, disease, gas, and other men, as well as the psychological challenges. Soldiers had to overcome
shell-shock, moral crises, traumatic breaks, and countless other mental and emotional strains. Erich
Maria Remarques novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Frederick Mannings, Her Privates We,
document this struggle for survival in beautiful and heart-wrenching detail. Although Erich Remarque
fought for Germany and Frederick Manning for Britain, their portrayals of the soldiers fight for
survival on the Western Front share some remarkable similarities. Both authors illustrate the cycle by
which soldiers lived their lives, showing how men were dehumanized into animals during battle but
slowly returned to humanity once behind the lines. In addition, each author depicts how war isolates
the individual from the world around them, degrading and eroding a mans individuality. They each
emphasize the soldiers desperate need for companionship and comradeship as a way to deal with
their isolation. These similarities suggest that these aspects of the soldiers experience were
experienced by many people attempting to survive on the Western Front. Finding these

36
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 18.
37
Frederick Manning, Her Privates We, (London: Serpents Tale First, 2013), 142.
Sean McCroskey
Writing 101 Neuschel
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commonalities in different narratives suggests that there may be many more aspects of the war that
were widely and commonly experienced by soldiers in the trenches.



















Notes
Bonadeo, Alfredo. War and Degradation: Gleanings from the Literature of the Great War.
Comparative Literature Studies 21, no. 4 (Winter, 1984): 409.
Sean McCroskey
Writing 101 Neuschel
3/28/2014
12

Eksteins, Modris. The Rites of Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000, 346.
Gemelli, Agostino Il nostro soldato. Saggi di psicologia militare. Milan, 1917.
Grayzel, Susan R. The First World War: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedfords/St.
Martins, 2013, 26.
Harari, Yuval Noah. Scholars, Eyewitnesses, and Flesh-Witnesses of War: A Tense Relationship.
Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 7, no. 2 (2009): 215.
Hynes, Samuel. The Soldiers Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War. London: Allen Lane, 1998, 2.
Kaplan, Richard Middleton. Facing the Face of the Enemy: Levinasian Moments in All Quiet on the
Western Front and the Literature of War. Modern Fiction Studies 54, no. 1 (Spring, 2008),
79.
Klein, Holger. In the Midst of Beastliness: Concepts and Ideals in Mannings Her Privates We. Journal
of Commonwealth Literature. 12, no. 2 (1977): 140.
Manning, Frederick. Her Privates We. London: Serpents Tale First, 2013, 15.
Marwil, Jonathan. A Lost Classic. The American Scholar 60, no. 4 (1991), 605.
Owen, Wilfred. Dulce et Decorum Est. The War Poetry Website. Date accessed: 3/22/2014,
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. New York: Continuum, 2004, 73-74.
Rowley, Brian A. Journalism in Fiction: Im Westen nichts Neues. in The First World War in Fiction.
1976, ed. Klein, Holger. London: Macmillan Press, 1976, 109.
Saulx-Tavannes, Jean de. 1838. Mmoires de tres-noble et tres-illustre Gaspard de Saulx, seigneur de
Tavannes. In Nouvelle collection des mmoires pour servir lhistoire de France, depuis le
XIIIesicle jusqu la fin du XVIIIe, ed. Joseph Franois Michaud and Jean Joseph Poujoulat. Series
1. Vol. 8. Paris: Lditeur du commentaire analytique du code civil, pp. 1504.
Sean McCroskey
Writing 101 Neuschel
3/28/2014
13

Sassoon, Siegfired. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. in The Memoirs of George Sherston. New York,
1937, 148.
The Liddell Hart Memoirs 1895-1938. New York: 1965, 17.
Watson, Alex. Self-Deception and Survival: Mental Coping Strategies on the Western Front, 1914-
1918. Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 2 (April, 2006), 253.