Okay, so I'm ahead in To Kill a Mockingbird, so I'm falling back on my pleasure reading book. Yeah, its still the one about WWI. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. It's so interesting to hear the well-known history from a different perspective. The writer, Paul Baumer, is smart, creative, and despite his emotionless exterior befitting a soldier, he is very soulful. Before the war, he wanted to be a writer, but now the war has scarred him and he finds himself to be just a robot, useful only for killing.
Right now in the book, Paul and Albert--one of his buddies--were wounded in a French attack. They are in the same "hospital" (and I use the term loosely) and are able to help each other through it. What was interesting, was the description of the doctors. Surgeons were saw-happy. If a wound was too hard to repair, the doctor would just chop off the whole limb. Because of this, Paul refuses to be "chloroformed" (or sedated). He is convinced that if he isn't conscious to stop the surgeon, he's going to lose his leg (which is basically signing your death certificate in those times). So Paul is conscious through the entire process. The doctor is mad that he can't use his saw, so he is visciously brutal when digging out the shrapnel and stitching up the wound. Paul's pain is extraordinary, but he still refuses to be sedated.
I love this book and I recommend it to anyone who likes war stories. It is sorrowfully beautiful and wakes us up to the fact that the enemy is made up of human beings just like us.
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