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 11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Against Indian Opposition”
During the month of May in 1917, Jünger’s regiment moves about often, from the famous Siegfried Line—a line of forts and tank defenses in Northern France—to a farm named Riqueval-Ferme. The farm, Jünger writes, is completely untouched by the war, and he and his fellow soldiers spend their days wandering its pathways in the fine spring weather: “The blooming hawthorn avenues in the park and the attractive surroundings gave our existence here an intimation of the leisurely country idyll that the French are so expert at creating” (142).
In June, with a troop of 20 men, he invests an outpost on the company front. Jünger goes out on patrol several times, crawling near enemy lines: “There is something stimulating about such excursions; the heart beats a little fast, and one is bombarded by fresh ideas” (145-6). After one such excursion, Jünger is awakened by an attacking force. There follows a series of fighting and fleeing in the darkness, until Jünger and his men are facing a dark wood from which they hear movement. Following a firefight in the darkness, Jünger discovers the bodies of several Indians, fighting for the British: “So these were Indians we had confronted, who had travelled thousands of miles across the sea, only to give themselves a bloody nose on this god-forsaken piece of earth against the Hanoverian Rifles” (150).
Another night fight does not go as well for Jünger. While attacking the enemy, one of Jünger’s men loses a machine gun, and Jünger almost loses his life: “In the middle of all this, I gave up all hope of a safe return. Every moment I was expecting to be hit. Death was at our heels” (153). On their return, Jünger is ordered back to reclaim the machine gun, but cannot find it, and retreats once again. He is relieved the next day, and the outpost is lost the day after that.
Chapter 11 Analysis
While Jünger has described plenty of artillery battles, and has even shot an enemy soldier, this is the first true firefight he describes in the book. Like his descriptions of artillery falling all around, the firefight he takes part in is chaos; he even fires on his own men: “Suddenly, a dark form arose out of the grass. I tore off a hand-grenade and hurled it in the direction of the figure, with a shout. To my consternation, I saw by the flash of the explosion that it was Teilengerdes, who, unnoticed by me, had somehow run on ahead” (147). In the next battle, Jünger loses his rifle and helmet. A soldier loses the company’s machine gun.
Jünger is describing the chaos and confusion of battle. In the darkness, they can’t tell who is who and often fire upon, or come close to firing upon, their own men. They stumble around in the dark, falling into traps. They panic and run away. Jünger, at this point, is a seasoned veteran, having spent almost two years in the war. He has seen men wounded and die, has lived through numerous artillery attacks that shook the earth beneath him, but still, in the rush and press of battle, all is confusion.
The aftermath, he says, is eerie. Where the attack took place, Jünger and his men find more and more dead bodies: “As I was making my way through the thicket once, on my own, I was dismayed by a quiet hissing and burbling sound. I stepped closer and encountered two bodies, which the heat had awakened to a ghostly type of life” (152). Thereafter, Jünger and his men view the place where the battle occurred as “gloomy” (152) because they know how easily, in the chaos and confusion, they could have died there.
