Paul just got back from leave and goes to find his comrades. When he finds where they should be staying, he notices that he does not see anyone and that there are only young men there now. He goes out to find Kat and does, but then he dies on the way back to the trenches.
The men start discuss what the reasons are for starting war and whether there would have been a war if Kaiser would have said no. Paul answered with "yes" because Kaiser was against war all along and there is still a war going on. They think about it more of why they are at war and they come to the conclusion that we are just fighting for their "fatherland," while truthfully so it their enemy. So who is the right person?
Soon the men are transferred to Russia to fight and they see dead men hanging in trees with limbs missing or scattered everywhere. Paul volunteers to go to check and see how strong the enemy position is manned, Paul gets ahead of the group and gets caught in the line of fire. He falls into a shell-hole and it is full of water. He has to stay as low as he can and has to pretend to be dead so the enemy wont kill him for real. Rockets can light up the sky for up to an hour so he has to stay still that long just so he is not noticed by the enemy. Paul then had to think of what he would do if an enemy happened to jump into the same shell-hole he was in for protection. He knew he would have to be ready because if he wasn't ready, then he would surely be dead.
As Paul suspected an enemy did jump into the same shell-hole he was in and immediately Paul struck at the man's throat with his hand knife. The man was not dead, but he will be. After attacking the man, Paul started to feel remorse for the man and decided to try to help him by bandaging his wounds and giving him water to drink. He began to realize that they two of them aren't so different after all. They were both fighting for a common reason and he felt guilt. He needed to find the mans name, but Paul was scared that if he knew his name that it would never be erased from his memory, and he never wanted to remember this time in his life. Until right then Paul had never killed a man with his bare hands. The man's name is Gerard Duval and he has a wife and daughter. Soon the man is dead.
Paul then decides he needs to get out of the shell hole. After crawling for some time, he hears his comrades calling his name. It is Kat and Albert. After talking to his comrades some more about his traumatic experience, they all come to the conclusion that "this is what they are there for, war is war."
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