Storm of Steel

The author, Ernst Jünger, arrives in the town of Bazancourt near the front. He can hear and see artillery exploding in the distance, but like the other soldiers, he is excited:

We had come from lecture halls, school desks and factory workbenches, and over the brief weeks of training, we had bonded together into one large and enthusiastic group. Grown up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war. We had set out in a rain of flowers, in a drunken atmosphere of blood and roses. Surely the war had to supply us with what we wanted; the great, the overwhelming, the hallowed experience (5).

Soon, however, the monotony of being a soldier gets to the men. Jünger says the long march through the Champagne region of France cools their excitement. They sleep in a barn. The next morning an artillery shell strikes the chateau they are quartered near, and 13 men die as a result. Jünger, talking to his fellow soldiers, sees that “the incident had rather blunted their enthusiasm for war” (7).

That same evening, Jünger’s regiment is moved to battle stations on the front.