Ernst Jünger was a highly decorated German World War I veteran who wrote Storm of Steel, the first of his many journals and books that described his experiences during the war. Ernst was born on March 29, 1895 to a middle class family in Heidelberg, Germany. When “The Great War” broke out in the summer of 1914, Ernst volunteered to fight for Germany. He trained in Hanover, Germany, where he had grown up. There he learned about all the different German equipment and technology used in battle. He was taught how to take apart, clean, and reload his gun, how to live in the trenches, and other crucial survival skills. In training, he was also taught about the German military ranks and discipline. Much of these skills were familiar to Ernst because of his time spent in the French Foreign Legion. Ernst and his companions were excited to finally see the face of war. They were thrilled to be able to participate in the action, but they were naïve to the real horrors of fighting. The very first page of his diary begins with:
“We had come from lecture halls, school desks, and factory workbenches, and over the brief weeks of training, we had bonded together into one large and enthusiastic group. Grown up in an age of security, we shared a year in for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war. We had set out in a rain of flowers, in a drunken atmosphere of blood and roses. Surely the war had to supply us with what we wanted; the great, the overwhelming, the hallowed experience. We thought of it as manly, as action, a merry dueling party on flowered, blood-bedewed meadows. ‘No finer death in all the world…’ anything to participate, not to have to stay at home!” (5)
After only two months of training, he was assigned to a reserve unit, stationed in Bazancourt, a town in the province of Champagne, France. Because of his education, he was selected to