In the first chapter of the classic World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front, four German soldiers at the front are disconsolate after having visited one of their friends, who is dying in a field hospital. They have had to bribe an orderly with cigarettes--the currency of the trenches--to give their comrade morphine. Now, one of the soldiers receives a letter from their former school master, Kantorek, who persuaded the four to join up to fight for their fatherland. The teacher, who is safe at home, refers to them in his letter as the "young men of iron." Hearing this, Paul Bäumer, the narrator, reflects for all young soldiers: "Young men of iron. Young? None of us is more than twenty. But young? Young men? That was long ago. We are old now."

With this, the German author Erich Maria Remarque stated a...