Storm of Steel

In August of 1916, Jünger’s regiment is shipped to the heart of the Battle of the Somme, a small village named Guillemont. They stop first at Combles, which has been destroyed by artillery; only a few buildings are left standing: “So far as we were able to see in the dark, Combles was a mere skeleton of its former self. Great amounts of wood and jettisoned household objects told us that its destruction was very recent” (93).

The entire area is under heavy artillery fire: “From time to time, the gigantic impact of a fifteen-inch shell drowned out all other noise. Clouds of shards washed through Combles, splattering against the branches of the trees, or striking the few intact roofs, sending the slates slithering down”(94). Jünger’s regiment is sent to the front, where they take positions in the shallow craters of bombs. The smell of the dead is everywhere, and Jünger finds corpses hurried beneath their positions by artillery: “The defile proved to be little more than a series of enormous craters full of pieces of uniform, weapons, and dead bodies” (97).

One of Jünger’s men is buried by the earth of an explosion. Others simply disappear, as does the village of Guillemont, only a chalk stain to mark where a limestone house had been.