The Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger — Read

The train stopped at Bazancourt, a small town in Champagne, and there we got out. With unbelievable awe we listened to the slow pulsation of the machinery of the front, a tune to which long years were to accustom us. Far away the white ball of a shrapnel shell melted into the grey December sky. The breath of the war passed by us with its peculiar horror. Did we imagine that nearly every one of us would be swallowed up in the days when that dull muttering over there broke out into unceasing thunder... one earlier, another later?

We had left lecture-room, classroom, and bench behind us. We had been welded by a few weeks' training into the corporate mass inspired by the enthusiasm of one thought... to carry forward the German ideals of '70. We had grown up in a material age, and in each one of us there was the yearning for great experience, such as we had never known. The war had entered into us like wine. We had set out in a rain of flowers to seek the death of heroes. The war was our dream of greatness, power, and glory. It was a man's work, a duel on fields whose flowers would be stained with blood. There is no lovelier death in the world... anything rather than stay at home, anything to make one with the rest....