Review: Storm of Steel

[sniper1shot]

Title: Storm of Steel

Authour: Ernest Junger

Publisher: Penguin Group

ISBN: 0 14 24.3790 5

Stars 4.5 (out of 5)

This book was recommended by another forum member as considered a classic. He was not mistaken. I enjoyed the book a lot. This book is on a German Stormtroop Officer in WWI.

The book covers the authours time in the front lines, in rest, in reserve and on leave after being wounded. He does survive the war with Germany's highest awards.

He writes about stuff that I was not aware of....like the amount of gas the allies use in their artillery bombardments. I was not aware that so much was used. Quite a few of his soldiers were either killed or wounded by artillery shells. You get the feeling that there was never a break to the constant shelling.

There are some very good descriptions of what the German soldier felt while on the attack. Both in a general offensive and also while on a raid. The authour talks about an attack on a French trench system and getting "lost" in the maze of trench works. He makes it out but a few of the raiding party does not. He is wounded numerous times incl at wars end, and avoids capture to make it back to his own lines after an allied offensive takes his sector of trenches.

There are a couple of points that I found confusing as when he is descrbing one of the raids, he was talking about the soldiers. He mentions their names a bit too much so that I had to go back a page or two to find out who he was talking about and how they got to where they were. The Introduction is 15.5 pages long and drags.......I almost put the book down because of it. ONCE past the intro I HIGHLY recommend this book as it is well written and also because there are not a lot of WWI German memoirs from front line fighters out there.

[Robert Dunlop]

Several threads on this book, including this one here:

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/i...st&p=627230

Robert