Unlike most war stories, All Quiet on the Western Front makes no effort to justify or sentimentalize either side of the conflict. When Erich Maria Remarque started writing the novel in 1927, he aimed to capture his experience of the war with journalistic clarity. Paul and his comrades hold no animus towards the French. They fight because they are told to fight and do not want to die. In one of the most famous scenes from the book, Paul falls into a shell-hole and buries his knife into the chest of a French solider. For hours he lay next to the slowly dying Frenchman and finally, wracked with guilt, confesses, “If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother.”