The Soldier at the Western Front – The Use of Flamethrower
Source 7: Erich Maria Remarque: All quiet on the western front

Erich Maria Remarque described in his extraordinarily successful novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” his experiences as a front-line soldier in the First World War. He had been called to arms in the age of 18 in 1916 and served for a short period of time at the frontline between June and July 1917. Due to a severe injury caused by the fragment of a shell he stayed for the rest of the war in an army hospital in Germany. Because of his literary critic of warfare Remarque became an enemy of the Nazis and accordingly his books have been banned in Germany after 1933.
The protagonist of his novel, the young soldier Paul Bäumer, describes in the following an enemy assault with flamethrowers.

„We occupy a crater and get surrounded. The stink of petroleum or oil blows across with the fumes of powder. Two fellows with a flamethrower are seen, one carries the tin on his back, the other has the hose in his hands from which the fire spouts. If they get so near that they can reach us we are done for, we cannot retreat yet.”
“We open fire on them. But they work nearer and things begin to look bad. Bertinck is lying in the hole with us. When he sees that we cannot hit them because under the sharp fire we have to think too much about keeping under cover, he takes a rifle, crawls out of the hole, and lying down propped on his elbows, he takes aim. He fires - the same moment a bullet smacks into him, they have got him. Still he lies and aims again; - once he shifts and again takes aim; at last the rifle cracks. Bertinck drops the gun and says: `Good` and slips back into the hole. The hindermost of the two flame-throwers is hit, he falls, the hose slips away from the other fellow, the fire squirts about on all sides and the man burns.“

Erich Maria Remarque: All quiet on the western front, 1929.

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