In February 1916, nineteen-year-old Karl, a university student in the German Empire, was filled with patriotic fervor and romantic notions of war. He resolutely put down his pen, took up arms, and set off for the battlefield at Verdun. But the horrors of war soon shattered his idealism: muddy trenches, relentless shelling, clouds of poison gas, mountains of corpses, and comrades who gradually lost their humanity in the depths of despair.
When the guns finally fell silent, all that remained was a heartfelt longing for peace.
