Storm of Steel

After healing from his wound, Jünger receives a brief home leave, where his father talks him into becoming an officer. He is sent to school at Döberitz, in Germany, and returns six weeks later as an ensign. In September, he travels back to his regiment in Douchy, where the “French autumn offensive was in full swing” (34). There are numerous bars, and the soldiers live in relative ease: “In the space of a single year, a crumbling rural village had sprouted an army town, like a great parasitical growth” (36). He describes young French boys following the Germans around, wanting to join the army. An hour’s march away is the city of Monchy-au-Bois, which has nearly been destroyed by the war: “Now the houses were burned down and shot up, the neglected gardens raked by shells, and the fruit trees snapped” (38).

After describing the devastation, Jünger details the vast network of trenches cut through the countryside and the dug-out shelters the soldiers sleep in and take shelter in. He also describes the monotony and fear that pervade the entire war, as well as the loneliness: “Yes, the man even gets quite pally, talks in a soft, low