50 pages • 1 hour read
Ernst JungerStorm of Steel
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1920A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapter 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “In the Village of Fresnoy”
After a furlough, Jünger sets up an observation post in the village of Fresnoy, under heavy firing. That night, he sleeps through an artillery barrage:
I had the impression, that night, of hearing a few dull crashing sounds and of Knigge [Jünger’s assistant] calling to me, but I was so fast asleep that I merely mumbled, ‘Oh, let them shoot!’ and turned over on my side, even though the room was as thick with dust as a chalk mill (132).
From his observation post, Jünger watches aerial battles: “Also during these days, there was a whole series of dogfights, which almost inevitably ended with defeat for the British” (133). Anytime Jünger is outside the bomb shelter, he is in danger of being killed:
I left the village at a gallop, as heavy shells had begun to fall. When I was about three hundred yards away, I stopped to watch the clouds thrown up by the spurting explosions […] When a few clusters of small shells began to fall on the narrow footpaths linking Arleux and Fresnoy, I decided I’d seen enough, and cleared the field to avoid being ‘a little bit killed’, as the current expression in the 2nd company had it (134).
With each day, the bombardment becomes more intense. In one attack, Jünger loses three of his men when a bomb hits the basement they shelter in. Jünger’s regiment is attacked for the next several days. Trapped in a basement under heavy fire, Jünger is ordered to withdraw. As soon as the last man exits the basement, the house is hit once again, and collapses: “Fresnoy was one towering fountain of earth after another”(138). After finally being relieved, Jünger is sent to the village of Serain, where he and the survivors of his regiment toast those who have fallen.
Chapter 10 Analysis
Jünger spends much of the chapter hiding in basements. The bombs continue to fall on all the villages in the area, so much that Jünger simply sleeps through assaults that shake the very stones of the house he is in: “When I got up and surveyed the debris, I quickly realized that a heavy shell had exploded on the roof, and smashed all the rooms, including our observation post. The fuse would only have had to be a little bigger, and they could have scraped off our remains with a spoon” (133). Shortly after sleeping through such a bombardment, several of Jünger’s men are killed in a basement, thinking themselves protected; Jünger includes these scenes to show that there really is no protection: even the stoutest walls come crashing down around them.
Another important scene is when German engineers blow up the church tower, which they are doing in every village so that the enemy artillery has a harder time getting their bearings and distance. In the last chapter, the retreating Germans destroyed everything behind them so the enemy would have fewer resources; here they destroy something of beauty and faith to protect themselves, meaning the war has now moved from what Jünger considers honorable, to a desperate act of salvation, the taking of any means necessary.
When Jünger isn’t below ground, he is up in the observation point or traveling between villages, where he watches the artillery explode constantly. But there is danger in even watching, as Jünger realizes when a man is mortally wounded by a falling splinter, which means that neither underground nor aboveground is safe—no place is.
After his men die in the basement, Jünger shows rare emotion: “Once back in my lodging, I first of all took some cherry brandy to recover” (136). And at the end of the chapter, Jünger gathers with other survivors to toast the fallen, where he claims that “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” (140). What he is saying is that those who survived became stronger.
