Ominously, at the same moment, they notice another train arriving in town loaded with returning wounded soldiers, who are carried off on stretchers.

Once at the front line, they are placed in a squad, along with soldiers Tjaden, Westhus, Detering and others, under the supervision of Stanislaus "Kat" Katzinsky, an older recalled reservist.

The French and German armies are shown attacking each other repeatedly over a few hundred yards of torn, corpse-strewn land.

A haughty Kaiser Wilhelm II (Denys Graham) visits their camp to ceremoniously pin medals on heroic soldiers, which includes Himmelstoss.

In visits to a beer garden and to his former teacher, Paul realises that his town's older men, in their enthusiasm for war, have no sense of the horrors they have sent their youth to.

After finishing the letter, Paul walks through the trench checking on the younger soldiers, having taken up Kat's position as a mentor.

Paul and his friends are clearly part of an industrialized war machine that ruthlessly uses them despite the soldiers having only a vague understanding of what they are fighting for.

The resulting 129-minute version was the one subsequently released on open matte (4:3 aspect ratio) VHS videos and DVDs.

[4] All of these, bar the 4:3 UK (ITV) and Australian (Beyond Home Entertainment) Blu-rays, are also in the film's cropped widescreen aspect ratio.