StrandedThey are stuck, exhausted, empty and just want to go home. Welcome to the world war life of soldiers Paul Baumer and Louie Zamperini. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul Baumer is a German soldier fighting for his life in the trenches during the First World War. Baumer fought for nearly four years before dying from poisonous gas. Unlike the story of this World War I soldier, Laura Hillenbrand recounts the life of an American Olympic runner named Louie Zamperini who became a bombardier during World War II in the biography Unbroken. Zamperini's plane crashed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, forcing him to float with two other men for forty-seven days until they reached Japanese territory. The war experiences of these soldiers had many similarities and differences. Baumer and Zamperini were peaceful men before they went to war and were subjected to cruelty that ultimately caused mental anguish. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayBoth Baumer and Zamperini went to war because they wanted to serve their country. Before joining the army, Baumer wrote poetry and the beginnings of a play (Remarque 19). He had a sensitive and compassionate side that no one on the battlefield would ever know. Baumer signed up to become a soldier “with enthusiasm and enthusiasm” (22). After he and his fellow soldiers began the training process, "[They] had imagined that [their] task would be different, only to find that [they] had been trained for heroism as if [they were] circus ponies" (22). The general in charge of training the new soldiers was extremely harsh and cruel to them and gave them bizarre punishments and tasks. Likewise, Zamperini enlisted as a soldier because he was angry over the cancellation of the 1940 Tokyo Olympics (Hillenbrand 44). “He had been uneasy about airplanes, but looking at P-38s, he felt drawn… Those who enlisted before being drafted could choose their branch of service” (44). Zamperini chose to enlist in the Air Force. On the day he left for flight training, “Louie looked out the [train] window…wondered if he would ever see [his father] again” (55). At this point in their war travels, Baumer and Zamperini are not stranded, exhausted or empty. Their journey had just begun. During the wars Baumer and Zamperini had different tasks and feelings. Baumer fought on foot in the trenches with dead, sick, and wounded soldiers surrounding him (Remarque 58). When he was on leave, he visited his family. When he was sitting in his old room he thought: “But now I see that I have been crushed without knowing it. I find that I no longer belong here, it is a foreign world” (168). Baumer realized that he was changing and knew there was no way to stop it from happening. All his time at war had made him feel uncomfortable in his home, with his family. Despite these changes, Baumer still retained his sensitive side. After killing an enemy soldier for the first time, he said: “Comrade, I didn't mean to kill you. If you jumped here again, I wouldn't… For the first time, I see that you are a man like me… Now I see your wife, your face, and our brotherhood” (223). Unlike Baumer, Zamperini never fought in battle or killed anyone because he was stranded in the ocean and then held prisoner in Japanese prison camps (Hillenbrand 119). When the lifeboat he was floating in finally reached land, “Louie felt profound relief, believing.