Recommended on the fantastic Rest Is History podcast, this is a relentlessly brutal first hand account from frontline of the First World War, as told by a German officer.
It’s a remarkably detailed story, possible due to the diaries of the author Ernst Junger. He took part in many key battles across France and Belgium, and the vividness of his recollections are amazing. Some of his accounts of trenches being dug through layers of bodies up in the mud are horrifying.
He was clearly a brave soldier and a great leader; how on earth he survived alive feels like a miracle given the umpteen times he describes artillery shells landing next to him, bullets grazing his body, shrapnel mutilating men stood right next to him. At the end of the book he counts up 14 separate times he was injured, totally 20 scars in total.
The book also contrasts the horror of an infantry undergoing artillery fire and the terror of mechanised combat, with the humanity of Junger and his recognition of both his comrades and the enemy as individuals with their own personalities, lives, and families.
I have to say the unrelenting nature of the narrative, skipping from battle to battle, made this a slightly tough read.
