// War Literature

Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel is a memoir that shows vivid description of his experience in World War I.  Ernst Junger tries to capture mostly the horrifying experiences that soldiers had to undergo.

“But finally we were so accustomed to the horrible that if we came on a dead body anywhere on a fire-step or in a ditch we gave it no more than a passing thought and recognized it as we would a stone or a tree. . . .”  From this quote we can see that their experiences in war is far extreme that in the battle field they had to undergo a form of transformation to be able to view sickening events in a daily basis.  I would have been overwhelmed of even seeing a body lying on the floor.  They view the corpses as if they were “stone or a tree”, as if they were something of the ordinary.  He also does mention “And we never for a moment dreamt that in this war the dead would be left month after month to the mercy of wind and weather, as once the bodies on the gallows were.”  Not only were their corpses but bodies that were their for months rotting.  Passing through a field of corpses and enduring the smell while avoiding bullets to keep from blowing your head off is an experience that Storm of Steel is trying to capture.  The multiple events that all come together as one and trying to capture that feeling to help us see what war truly is.

A scene that grabbed my attention was “I put French cartridges in my pockets, unbuckled a silk – soft ground- sheet, and carried off a water – bottle covered with blue cloth, and after three steps threw all away again.  I was induced by a fine striped shirt, lying near an officer’s ransacked valise, to pull off my uniform and change my linen, and I was delighted by the fresh, clean feel on my skin.”  This scene I think was the most interesting because it showed how little supplied they were and he is willing to throw everything away for one clean shirt.  They are in a situation in which a shirt becomes valuable.  I also interpret this as if he was making the shirt a symbol for a few seconds of escape from the world he is in.  But at the same time reminds him of the circumstances he is in.

His passages bring about what war truly means.  Trying to keep it together mentally.  It also brings in fear, uncertainty, instinct, a sense of rush, at one point also mentions ignorance.

I welcome anyone who wants to pick a scene and explain in detail what might Ernst Junger try to convey from these experiences.  What might he want us to understand or wants us to see from these events that occur in Storm of Steel.