Earth is Our Savior

In chapter four, i read something that really stuck out to me. Pages 55-56 used imagery to show the hardships of being a soldier in the war. "To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother: He stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for 10 seconds to live, to run, 10 seconds of life; recieves him again and often forever". In this quote, i learned that something we think is so simple and useless can mean so much to a soldier. To us, the earth is just something we take advantage of, we never give much thought to it. But to a soldier, earth is their escape, from the bombs, from the gunshots. Earth means life, and not life meaning you wake up everyday, fall asleep, and repeat until the day you die. To a soldier, life is being away from the violence, away from the fear of knowing that on the battlefield, it's every man for himself. "We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers- we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals". Soldiers aren't people born to fight for us, they have hopes, dreams. Being surrounded by people killing their own kind isn't one of them. Earth is the only thing they have to help them keep their sanity. At least for an instant.