Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger

Author:Ernst Junger
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780141906911
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

In Flers, I found my designated quarters had been occupied by several staff sergeant-majors, who, claiming they had to guard the room on behalf of a certain Baron von X, refused to make room, but hadn’t reckoned on the short temper of an irritated and tired front-line officer. I had my men knock the door down, and, following a short scuffle in front of the peacetime occupants of the house, who had hurried along in their nightgowns to see what the matter was, the gentlemen, or gentleman’s gentlemen, were sent flying down the stairs. Knigge was sufficiently gracious to throw their boots out after them. After this successful attack, I climbed into my nicely warmed-up bed, offering half of it to my friend Kius, who was still wandering around looking for an abode. The sleep in this long-missed fixture did us so much good that the following morning we woke, as they say, fully refreshed.

Since the 1st Battalion had not lost many men during the recent fighting, the mood was pretty cheerful as we marched to the station at Douai. Our destination was the village of Serain, where we were to rest and recuperate for a few days. We had a friendly welcome and good accommodation from the villagers, and already on our first evening the happy sounds of reunited comrades could be heard from many of the dwellings.

Such libations after a successfully endured engagement are among the fondest memories an old warrior may have. Even if ten out of twelve men had fallen, the two survivors would surely meet over a glass on their first evening off, and drink a silent toast to their comrades, and jestingly talk over their shared experiences. There was in these men a quality that both emphasized the savagery of war and transfigured it at the same time: an objective relish for danger, the chevalieresque urge to prevail in battle. Over four years, the fire smelted an ever-purer, ever-bolder warriorhood.

The next morning, Knigge appeared and read out some orders, from which I understood that I was to take over the command of the 4th Company at around noon. This was the company in which the Lower Saxon poet Hermann Löns fell in the autumn of 1914 outside Rheims, a volunteer at the age of almost fifty.

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