Erich Mariaremarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" is one of the
             greatest novels on World War I that exists today.
             All Quiet on the Western Front was written in a first-person perspective in
             which one soldier, Paul Baumer, tells the story of what it is like to be a German
             Along with Baumer are his friends Behm, Kemmerich, Haie, Detering, Leer,
             Tjaden, Muller, Kropp, & Katczinsky.
             Behm is never really explained much of. At first, he does not want to join the
             army, but teasing and hounding from fellow classmates convince him to join.
             Ironically, he is the first to die.
             Kemmerich is one of the first to die, so the story never really involves him
             much. After being shot in the leg, the need for amputation arrives. Shortly after his
             leg is amputated, a different infection is formed, and slowly kills him. Because of
             Kemmerich, the book is able to show how important material things are to those in
             Haie was a large man described by Baumer as a peat digger. Haie is one of
             the characters in which the book is able to explain some of the extreme and unusual
             things that the soldiers did to keep occupied and not let the chains of boredom catch
             up with them. During his time at the front, he would collect enemy parachutes from
             the French Star-Shells. He then sent these silk-made parachutes home to his
             girlfriend to make shirts, dresses, clothes, and other different materials out of them.
             He dies when a massive counter-attack battle wounds him with a bullet to the back.
             Detering was a soldier who mainly kept to himself. He is described as a
             peasant who thinks of nothing more than his farmland and his wife. Because of this
             not too many of the other soldiers think much of him. One day, while returning
             from the front he saw a tree with blossoms that were white. The same night that he
             returned, he went back to the tree and took the blossoms and returned to camp. ...