When Remarque writes about going over the top, or any combat situation, there is always this sense of emotional detachment in his words. The scenes are delivered in a very cold manner with short clipped phrases, almost mechanical. Paul Bäumer describes the experience of going over the top like this every time,

“We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their splintered stumps into the next shell-hole; a lance corporal crawls a mile and a half on his hands dragging his smashed knee after him; another goes to the dressing station and over his clasped hands bulge his intestines; we see men without jaws, without faces; we find one man who has held the artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in order not to bleed to death. The sun goes down, night comes, the shells whine, life is at an end” (134).

This kind of emotional detachment from the horror of war is necessary. One cannot become emotionally involved with each wounded man, with every atrocity, or it will eventually lead to insanity. This is the world that Remarque’s characters are forced to live in, it is brutal and cold, and in order to survive, one must become indifferent to one’s surroundings.