plot

At the outset of World War I, a group of German boys leave their desks for the army, inspired by the marching soldiers in the streets and by the uplifting rhetoric of their schoolmaster. Only one wavers but he too is eventually persuaded.

Sent to the front, their illusions are shattered by the cynical stoicism of seasoned soldiers and by their own first experience under fire. They share the terror and exhaustion of constant fighting as well as the bewilderment of watching their schoolfriends die on the battlefield.

The central character is Paul Baumer. His first experience of killing a man, face to face, is traumatic. In other circumstances the Frenchman could ave been a friend and comrade rather than an enemy.

After being wounded, Paul is sent home on leave to find a world with which he now has little contact. False romantic ideas of war still persist in the school and among the belligerent old men in the beer cellars.

Almost with relief he returns to the front. A few old comrades are stil alive in his unit but it is mostly filled with new recruits - as young and green as he was once, not so many months ago.

Some time later Paul is peering through the loophole of his trench when he sees a butterfly. He reaches out to catch it. A french sniper takes aim. Paul's hand falls limp.

Across the corpse-strewn fields of France march columns of ghostly soldiers - accusation in their eyes.

stills

marching soldiers in the street...

inspire some german boys to join up...

but seasoned soldiers shatter their illusions...

as do their own experiences...

which include seeing schoolfriends die...

and paul kills, face to face, for the first time...

but back home old men romantise the war...

whilst back at the trench paul tries to catch a butterfly...

but a sniper gets him...

and across the
corpse-strewn fields
of france march
columns of ghostly
soldiers - accusation
in their eyes...

and all is
quiet on the
western front...