Storm of Steel

In late August, as the men are driven to the village of Guillemont (what will become known as the heart of the Battle of the Somme), the men are in high spirits. En route, one of the truck drivers injures his thumb, and Jünger is sickened by the sight, having “always been sensitive to such things.” He remarks on the strangeness of this memory, given that he soon witnessed such horrible battlefield injuries; he suggests that one’s responses to events are often determined by their context.

When they stop for the night, the artillery fire is louder than anything he’s heard before. A runner guides Jünger’s platoon to the town of Combles. The runner is the first German soldier Jünger has ever seen wearing a steel helmet, and right away, this signals the beginning of a harsher war. As the man describes his experiences, he sounds almost apathetic and impassive; yet Jünger says that it’s just such men that are needed for fighting.

On their way to Combles, the platoon passes through a notorious bottleneck that’s filled with corpses and a “sweetish” smell of death that’s both repulsive and strangely invigorating. Looking back on this experience, Jünger describes the occasion as having an “exalted, almost demoniacal lightness […] attended by fits of laughter.”

The town of Combles has been decimated by heavy artillery fire. Jünger chooses as his quarters a house that had belonged to a brewer. The floors are covered with discarded clothes, books, furniture, and photographs. The men huddle in the basement, silent, heads aching, even thinking impossible under the ceaseless, thunderous artillery barrage. Later, the men are led, at a run, through heavy shrapnel fire to reach their position on the front line. It’s an exhausting, terrifying run, as wounded men are left helpless by the sides of the road, and they find themselves stepping on corpses at one point.

They finally reach the defile in open country that will be their position on the line. In the morning, they see dead bodies all around, and more are found as they begin to dig foxholes. They are soon mercilessly shelled. The British firepower capacity is far superior to the Germans’ weak resources. Jünger has a fright when a nearly spent shell fragment hits his belt buckle. That night, a British ration party blunders into the German lines and is shot down; the Germans reason that they could never have taken them prisoner in these surroundings. When the unit is finally relieved, they still face a fearful gauntlet of shells as they hurry back to Combles. They camp in the forest, fortifying themselves against the rain with red wine.

Back in Combles a few days later, Jünger’s unit occupies the basement of a vintner’s house, which is filled with antique art and books. After a relaxing afternoon of perusing a book, Jünger goes outside and is promptly struck by shrapnel in the left calf. His comrades carry him through fire to the medic across the street, where the surgeon reports that the bones are undamaged. He is delivered by ambulance to the hospital at St-Quentin just as the British are successfully taking Guillemont. After about a week in the hospital, he is back on his feet.

Jünger received reports from his orderly, Otto Schmidt, and others who remained behind in the defile outside Guillemont. By the morning after Jünger’s evacuation, Schmidt, along with Sergeant Heistermann, Jünger’s subordinate, appeared to be the only two men who survived the overnight bombardment from the British. They discover that a few others have withdrawn to a narrow shelter, but as they make their way to join them, Heistermann disappears and is never seen again. Not long after, the British overrun the shelter, and Schmidt is injured by hand-grenades. Combles falls not long after.