Drunk in war

The front cover of the first editon of Storm of Steel US edition

There is more to war than trauma. When studying soldier’s memoirs as part of my PhD on “The Pleasures of War", I found swathes of play, laughter, fun and leisure.

One memoir stands out for the sheer amount of boozing. In Storm of Steel, a World War I classic, the German soldier Ernst Jünger drinks constantly with soldiers and locals across the four years he spends in and around the trenches of the Western Front.

I counted at least 37 instances of him drinking or mentions of others doing so. Aside from the constant appearance of bottles of wine and barrels of beer, he also enjoys cherry-brandy, ginger beer, cognac, rum, schnapps, raw spirits, whisky and lots of cups of coffee and tea.

Sometimes Jünger drinks before a raid: “Schultz discovered me behind a bush in close confabulation with a bottle of Burgundy that I had brought with me to invigorate me for the precarious adventure and to calm my nerves”. He is tipsy when they take an English trench: “After half an hour we proceeded, in an exalted mood to which the English rum may have contributed …”.

They celebrate successful engagements: “After these excitements we drank a few bottles of red wine in Sievers’s dugout”. They drink the alcohol they find in abandoned houses: “I invited a party of my fellow-officers to drink mulled wine spiced with all the spices left behind by the owner of the house”. They drink when they left a town: “…we celebrated our departure from Orainville by a tremendous beer-drinking in the huge barn”.

There are parties: “At night when walking late through the narrow streets one heard the sounds of carnival in every billet”x They drink for fun, escapism and to get highly intoxicated.

He also shags but I’ll get into that another time.

(I know Jünger is a controversial figure in terms of his relationship with the Nazi party. Interestingly, his biographer Elliot Neaman says Jünger went through many ideological phases including fascism, surrealism, leftism, drug inspired mysticism and more... ) #war #worldwar1