The sky glowed with live ammunition. Paul was racing through a field and he plummeted into a dank trench. Moments later Paul was startled by a French soldier who fell into the trench with him. He instinctively stabed the man three times until the man fell to the ground. Paul was overcome by the reality of having killed a man face to face without the luxury of the battlefield around him. Paul then saw who he thought was the enemy in a new way, as a human being much like himself . "Now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony. Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy." (p 223) The French soldier was not the enemy, just another victim, like Kemmerich, only wearing different clothes, and speaking a different language.
             "Yes, that's the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron youth! Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? That is long ago. We are old folk." (p 18) Kantorek was the enemy for pushing his students to their own deaths, and crushing the futures he was supposed to be helping them build. Kat and Paul's friends from school were also the enemy because they persuaded Paul to enlist. The parents of the many young soldiers were the enemy because they were so easily able
             to call their children cowards, and their words had a larger effect on their children than any other person's. Above all, the arch evil was the government that gave them rifles, uniforms, and a fabricated reason to fight, when they new so many would die and so many others would be ruined by the war for the
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