StrandedThey are stuck, exhausted, empty and just want to go home. Welcome to the lives of soldiers Paul Baumer and Louie Zamperini during the World War. 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 World War I. Baumer fought for nearly four years before dying from toxic gas. Unlike this soldier's story of World War I, Laura Hillenbrand chronicles 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 and two other men to float 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 entering their wars and were subjected to cruelty that ultimately caused mental anguish. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Baumer and Zamperini both entered the war because they wanted to serve their country. Before enlisting in the army, Baumer wrote poetry and the beginning of a play (Note 19). He had a sensitive and compassionate side that no one on the battlefield would ever know. Baumer enlisted to become a soldier “with eagerness and enthusiasm” (22). After he and his comrades-in-arms began the training process, "[they] had imagined that [their] task would be different, only to discover that [they] were being trained for heroism as if they were circus ponies” (22). The general responsible for training the new soldiers was extremely harsh and cruel to them and imposed bizarre punishments and tasks on them. Similarly, Zamperini enlisted as a soldier because he was angry at the cancellation of the 1940 Tokyo Olympics (Hillenbrand 44). “He was not comfortable with airplanes, but looking at the P-38s he felt an attraction…Those who had enlisted before being drafted could choose their branch of the military” (44). Zamperini chose to join the Army Air Corps. The day he left for aerial training, “Louie looked out the [train] window… he wondered if he would ever see [his father] again” (55). At this point in their war journey, Baumer and Zamperini are not stranded, exhausted or empty. Their journeys were only just beginning. During the wars, Baumer and Zamperini had different tasks and feelings. Baumer fought on foot in the trenches surrounded by dead, sick and wounded soldiers (Note 58). When he was on leave, he visited his family. 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 have my place here, it’s a foreign world” (168). Baumer realized he was changing and knew he had no way to stop it from happening. All the time he had spent in the war had made him uncomfortable in his own home, with his own family. Despite these changes in Baumer, he still had his sensitive side. After killing an enemy soldier for the first time, he said, “Comrade, I didn’t mean to kill you. If you came back here, 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 companionship” (223). Unlike Baumer, Zamperini never fought in a battle or killed anyone because he was stranded in the ocean and then held.