Status Updates From All Quiet on the Western Front

“But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was the abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought if your hand-grenades, if your bayonet, if your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late.”