Storm of Steel

The next day, following an artillery barrage (what Jünger comes to know as “drumfire”), the company is finally ordered forward. Further up the line, people are hit—Jünger sees bits of bloody cloth and flesh where the casualties were carried away. Shells and tree branches begin to crash down; a dead horse blocks the path. Amid all this blood and gore, “there [is] a wild, unsuspected hilarity.”

The column continues marching loosely over no-man’s-land, past dead and dying figures, and Jünger reflects that the experience is less frightening than he’d expected. They are held down by artillery fire for a while, then advance across French territory toward the village of Les Eparges. On the way, they pass dozens of frozen, unburied French corpses.

The next day, Jünger examines the unfamiliar contents of the captured French trench and waits with his comrades while German and French bullets and shells fly overhead. Sitting with Kohl, a veteran of Perthes, Jünger is soon assured that this is his first “proper” battle. Later, as the group is moving toward a different position, they are pursued through a stand of beech trees by terrifying explosions. Suddenly, Jünger is wounded in the thigh by a piece of shrapnel. Taking shelter in the trench he’d just left, he discovers many other wounded men, some of them far worse off than himself. Horrified by their suffering, he flees back into the undergrowth outside, even as shells continue to fall.

Eventually, stretcher-bearers find Jünger and carry him back to the dressing-station. The next day, a wagon bears him through heavy fire to the main medical station, and he’s ultimately loaded onto a hospital train bound for Heidelberg. Seeing his hometown in the springtime, Jünger “ha[s] good and serious thoughts, and for the first time sense[s] that this war [i]s more than just a great adventure.”

At Les Eparges, Jünger has survived his first battle, and it was very different from what he had expected. During the entire engagement, he never set eyes on an opponent. Only much later will he experience the clash of opponents on the open battlefield.