The French journalist Henri Barbusse (1873-1935) volunteered for the army at the outbreak of war in 1914 and was repeatedly deployed at the front until 1916. The novel "The Fire," published in the same year and quickly becoming a bestseller, depicts one of the first accounts of the unleashed brutality of modern warfare, with its material battles and enormous casualty figures. Barbusse's "Diary of a Corporal," as the subtitle suggests, had a lasting impact on the pacifist movement in Europe and was a significant influence on Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front.".