German storm troopers emerging from a thick cloud of phosgene gas laid down by German forces as they attack British trench lines.

Excerpts  from_The Storm of Steel: From the Diary of a German Storm-Troop

Officer on the Western Front_ By Ernst Jünger

Published in 1929

Ernst Jünger German officer

“Regniéville”

[July 1917] Rations, too, were very poor. Beyond the thin midday

soup, there was nothing but the third of a loaf, and something

infinitesimal to eat with it, usually half-mouldy jam. Most of mine was

always eaten by a fat rat, for which I often lay in wait, but in vain.

This sparse living, which left us always half-fed, brought about a

most unpleasant state of affairs. The men often suffered literally from

hunger, and this led to pilfering of rations. . . . When it comes to food,

the good manners that in Europe are mostly whitewash are soon

scratched off. . . . Privations and danger tear away all that has been

acquired, and then good form survives only in those in whom it is born.

[Jünger, p. 192]

“The Great Offensive”

[1918]. . .Everybody had that clutching feeling: ‘It’s coming

over!’ There was a terrific stupefying crash . . . the shell had burst in

the midst of us. . . .

I picked myself up half-conscious. The machine-gun ammunition

in the large shell-hole, set alight by the explosion, was burning

an intense pink glow. It illumined the rising fumes of the shell-burst,

in which there writhed a heap of black bodies and the shadowy

forms of the survivors, who were rushing from the scene in all directions.

At the same time rose a multitudinous tumult of pain and cries

for help.

I will make no secret of it that after a moment’s blank horror I

took to my heels like the rest and ran aimlessly into the night. It was

not till I had fallen head over heels into a small shell-hole that I understood

what had happened. Only to hear and see no more! Only to get

away, far away, and creep into a hole! And yet the other voice was

heard: ‘You are the company commander, man!’ Exactly so. I do not

say it in self-praise. . . . I have often observed in myself and others that

an officer’s sense of responsibility drowns his personal fears. There is

a sticking-place, something to occupy the thoughts. So I forced myself

back to the ghastly spot. . . .

The wounded men never ceased to utter their fearful cries. Some

came creeping to me when they heard my voice and whimpered,

‘Sir. . .Sir!’ One of my favourite recruits, Jasinski, whose leg was broken

by a splinter, caught hold of me round the knees. Cursing my

impotence to help, I vainly clapped him on the shoulder. Such

moments can never be forgotten.

I had to leave the wretched creatures to the one surviving

stretcher bearer and lead the faithful few who remained and who collected

round me away from the fatal spot. Half an hour before I had

been at the head of a first-rate company at fighting strength. Now

the few who followed me through the maze of trenches where I lost

my way were utterly crestfallen. A young lad, a milksop, who a few

days before had been jeered at by his companions because during

training he had burst into tears over the weight of a box of ammunition,

was now loyally hulking one along on our painful way after

retrieving it from the scene of our disaster. When I saw that, I was finished.

I threw myself on the ground and broke into convulsive sobs,

while the men stood gloomily round me. [Jünger, pp. 245–46]

“The Armistice 1918”

. . . Why should I conceal that tears smarted in my eyes when I

thought of the end of the enterprise in which I had borne my share?

I had set out to the war gaily enough, thinking we were to hold a festival

on which all the pride of youth was lavished, and I had thought

little, once I was in the thick of it, about the ideal that I had to stand

for. Now I looked back—four years of development in the midst of a

generation predestined to death, spent in caves, smoke-filled

trenches, and shell-illumined wastes; years enlivened only by the pleasures

of a mercenary, and nights of guard after guard in an endless

perspective; in short, a monotonous calendar full of hardships and privation,

divided by the red-letter days of battles. And almost without

any thought of mine, the idea of the Fatherland had been distilled

from all these afflictions in a clearer and brighter essence. That was

the final winnings in a game on which so often all had been staked:

the nation was no longer for me an empty thought veiled in symbols;

and how could it have been otherwise when I had seen so many die

for its sake, and been schooled myself to stake my life for its credit

every minute, day and night, without a thought? And so, strange as

it may sound, I learned from this very four years’ schooling in force

and in all the fantastic extravagance of material warfare that life has

no depth of meaning except when it is pledged for an ideal, and that

there are ideals in comparison with which the life of an individual and

even of a people has no weight. And though the aim for which I

fought as an individual, as an atom in the whole body of the army,

was not to be achieved, though material force cast us, apparently, to

the earth, yet we learned once and for all to stand for a cause and if

necessary to fall as befitted men.

Hardened as scarcely another generation ever was in fire and

flame, we could go into life as though from the anvil; into friendship,

love, politics, professions, into all that destiny had in store. It is not

every generation that is so favoured.

. . .Germany lives and Germany shall never go under! [Jünger,

pp. 317–19]