4.25
funny medium-paced

Quick read. Loved the author's humour and perspective. He goes into some detail on the living conditions of a frontline German soldier. Loved this passage:

"Recently I've been trying, with increasing success, to submerge myself into even the least important things and thereby to seize great happiness. Thus, with the necessary concentration and love, you can be transported into the heights of rapture simply at the sight of a tiny bug on the lid of your mess kit. ... With practice, one can intensify this feeling that afterward the big things such as war, death, hunger seem very tiny and unimportant. So one doesn't necessarily have to have a whole pair of pants or a full butter jar. The disagreeable things that bring the monotony so crassly into consciousness every day become to unimportant that it is truly a pleasure to observe how one can defend oneself against those chapters of life." He goes on to finish the letter with "...be happy that your son is on the point of learning a way never again to be bored, bad-humored, or sad while sitting in a hole in the ground."