Yes , I'm quite an old fart . Old enough to still vividly remember year 1970 , when my grandfather told me a chilling story from WWI . In 1914 he was enlisted in Austro Hungarian forces , his cousin also . I still have original , framed , enlarged photo of that cousin in uniform , taken in early 1915 . Anyway , I remember painful , sad expression on my grandfathers face , when he told me how his cousin died right beside him in a trench of Russian front in 1917 . He was shot by a sniper . My grandfather wrote an exact date of his cousins enlisting and death on backside of that photo . . He also told me how horrible the soldiers suffered in those trenches . It actually pains me while I'm writing this , and I can feel the soldiers pains when I read E.M. Remarques "All Quiet On Western Front" . And this movie , while not bad at all , IMHO , fails to expose the true dread and emotions that this book , my grandfathers stories and other , much better war movies do .