The war goes on

Dehumanizing the enemy comes with the territory during wartime. It can take years for former enemies to seem human again. Following World War I, this process sped along more quickly thanks to Erich Maria Remarque and his great novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Published in 1928, the book describing the war from a German point of view quickly became an international bestseller, even in countries such as the United States that a decade before had been at war with Germany.

Remarque later became a U.S. citizen and married a movie star (Paulette Goddard), but he continued to write about the war from the German point of view. Among these writings is Eight Stories (2018), a collection of tales he wrote for American magazines, mostly Collier's.

The stories show us that long after a war is over and after the citizens of warring nations have accepted each other as human again, the war still goes on for those who fought on the front lines. They can never really go home again

In "Where Karl Had Fought," a friend drives Karl Broeger back to the battlefield where he had fought 10 years before. A bank manager now, he was a sergeant then, leading a charge. The narrator says, "In the midst of the fourteen thousand crosses on the broad central pathway a solitary man, remote and small, goes to and fro, ever to and fro. That is more afflicting than if all were still. Karl pushes on."

"Josef's Wife" tells of a soldier who doesn't remember his wife when he is brought home to her after the war. They own a farm, but he is useless on it. Nothing helps Josef until his wife decides to take him back to the battlefield, to the very site where he sustained his injuries.

The first story in the book may be the best of the lot. Called "The Enemy," the story makes the point that the real enemy in wartime is not the soldiers on the other side but rather the weapons that all soldiers carry. When one holds a tool of any kind, whether it's a hammer or a gun, it must eventually be put to use.

In the story, German and French soldiers temporarily put down their weapons and exchange simple gifts in no man's land. This echoes a true story about a brief Christmas truce between the trenches in 1914, dramatized in the wonderful French film Joyeux Noel.

All of these stories are brief. Each is poignant. Together they give us a picture of war that lasts as long as the soldiers do.