Carl Melcher has the homecoming that Paul Baumer never had as he recovers from his wounds at home. For Melcher, his war is over as his next duty will be stateside but as he sadly concludes as he listen to latest hit on the radio, "They were playing some new song I 'd never heard before. It had a pretty good beat, and I knew I could dance to it. But not there, not with those people. There was something about them." He will soon begin the hard adjustment back into civilian life.

Paul Clayton is the strongest writing about Melcher last days in Japan and moving on to America. We see how Melcher's Vietnam tour has affected him. Melcher has seen friends died and a love affair disintegrate. There are times that Melcher feels that being alone is better than having friends since friendship and love does not seem to last. For Melcher, his biggest difficulty will be to discover friendship and love. Remarque spares his main protongest the misery of trying to adjust to a post-war Germany.

In Remarque's Germany, chaos ruled. After the war, Germany was left prostrated and defeated. In 1917, Germany had knocked Russia out of the war and prepared to do the same against the Allies on the Western front. Over the 12 months, Germany failed to knock the Allies out and in the end, it was Germany who sued for peace.

Germany was disarmed and the glory of the young German nation that was forged in the late 19th century cease to exist. At the end of the 20's, Remarque saw a Germany about to slip in economic depression and the Weimar Republic close to collapse. An Austrian turn German citizen was calamoring for Germany return to its former glory and within five years, this former corporal would become the Furher. Just as the Kaiser led his nation to ruin in the first World War, Adolf Hitler will lead Germany to diaster that will cost millions of lives and forever change the world. At the end of World War II, Germany would be a divided nation. Remarque views war as futility that only can lead to diaster and from his perspective, all he could see was his nation in ruin.

Clayton's America proved different. Vietnam was a losing war that was part of a larger conflict that would end in victory. For the men who led their nation into Vietnam was not seeking empire like Germany Kaiser but to protect the independence of South Vietnam and arrest the communist threat in Southeast Asia. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later puts Vietnam in a different perspective. America would truimph in the cold war and the cause of freedom spread as a result. Clayton's fellow comrades who died in Vietman did not die in vain. With the Vietnam war seen as part of the larger conflict, their sacrifices proved valuable. United States did not collapse in chaos or ruin.