I really liked it. The story is told simply and is short, but it's powerful and philosophic and packs in a poetic punch. I'm not big on war stories but I liked this one mainly because of the beautiful and melancholic poetic nature of some of the passages and also because the descriptions were very vivid. I liked how it interspersed scenes of terrible war and violence with scenes of relaxation and beauty. Here's a short passage that I liked:
Quote:
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It might easily have happened that we should not be sitting here on our boxes today; it came damn near to that. And so everything is new and brave, red poppies and good food, cigarettes and summer breeze.
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I also liked the abrupt final sad scene, as well as longer passages when he and another soldier cook a goose in the middle of the night and also when he's remembering a cathedral cloister and a meadow stream with a line of trees; I wanted to include the latter passage in this post but I think it's too long.