All Quiet On The Western Front: by Erich Maria Remarque.

One of the few looks at a war depicting it with all its horrors and unappetising, sordid details - perhaps an original in that sense. Not bugles but barely school graduate (or not even graduate) boys leaving in tears just held back while they can just about not cling to their mothers as the train is ready to leave; not glories but the real details of a war as it happens to normal soldiers. This is the reality when the war is as pointless as that begun by Germany in wwI, and the horror then spread to involve various other nations and their soldiers, what with the years of trenches and living in mud in all sorts of weather in northern Europe.

The author is respected and celebrated as one of the best for very good reason, even if he had done nothing but this one brilliant piece telling it like it was.