The Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger — Read

On the 4th of July 1917 we got out of the train at the famous Mars-la-Tour. The 7th and 8th Companies were quartered in Doncourt, where for some days we lived an almost contemplative life. The only source of conflict for me was the shortage of rations. It was strictly forbidden to forage in the fields, and yet the military police brought me reports nearly every morning with the names of men whom they had caught potato-lifting by night. I had to punish them, for the crime of being caught, as it stood in my (perhaps unofficial) code.

I had to learn, too, during those days that wrongdoing never comes to any good. Tebbe and I had brought with us a princely lord-mayor's coach from an abandoned Flemish mansion, and had contrive to include it in the transport unobserved. Now we planned a magnificent expedition to Metz, in order to taste life at the full once more. So we harnessed up one afternoon and drove off. Unfortunately, the coach had no brakes, since it was designed for the Flemish plain, not for the hills of Lorraine. Before we were out of the village we had already begun to roll, and soon found ourselves embarked on a mad career that boded no good. The first to jump for it was the coachman; then Tebbe, who fell full-length on a heap of agricultural implements, and lay there. I remained alone on the silken upholstery, but certainly not at my ease. A door flew open, and was knocked straight off by a telegraph pole. Finally, the coach leapt down a bank and crashed against the wall of a house. I left the wreckage by a window, and ascertained that, with my usual luck, I was none the worse.