Ernst Jünger 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier:

Ernst Jünger 

29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier:

 philosopher, and entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir Storm of Steel. 

On 1 August 1914, shortly after the start of World War I, Jünger enlisted as an Einjährig-Freiwillige (one year volunteer) Füsilier-Regiment Generalfeldmarschall Prinz Albrecht von Preußens" (Hannoversches) Nr.

73 named for the former regent of Hannover, Albrecht von Preussen of the Hannoverian 19th Division and after training was transported to the Champagne front in December.

 He was wounded for the first time in April 1915. While on convalescent leave he took up a position his father arranged for him to become an officer aspirant (Fahnenjunker). Jünger was commissioned a Leutnant (2nd Lieutenant) on 27 November 1915.

 As platoon leader, he gained a reputation for his combat exploits and initiative in offensive patrolling and reconnaissance. 

During the Battle of the Somme near the obliterated remains of the village of Guillemont his platoon took up a front line position in a defile that had been shelled until it consisted of little more than a dip strewn with the rotting corpses of predecessors. He wrote:

    As the storm raged around us, I walked up and down my sector. The men had fixed bayonets. 

They stood stony and motionless, rifle in hand, on the front edge of the dip, gazing into the field.

 Now and then, by the light of a flare, I saw steel helmet by steel helmet, blade by glinting blade, and I was overcome by a feeling of invulnerability. We might be crushed, but surely we could not be conquered

The platoon was relieved but Jünger was wounded by shrapnel in the rest area of Combles and hospitalized; his platoon reoccupied the position on the eve of the Battle of Guillemont and was obliterated in a British offensive.[6] He was wounded for the third time in November 1916, and awarded the Iron Cross First Class in January 1917.

In the spring of 1917, he was promoted to Hauptmann, commanding 7th company and stationed at Cambrai.

 Transferred to Langemarck in July, Jünger's actions against the advancing British included forcing retreating soldiers to join his resistance line at gunpoint.

 He arranged the evacuation of his brother Friedrich Georg, who had been wounded. 

In the Battle of Cambrai (1917) Jünger sustained two wounds, by a bullet passing through his helmet at the back of the head, and another by a shell fragment on the forehead.

He was awarded the House Order of Hohenzollern. While advancing to take up positions just before Ludendorff's Operation Michael on 19 March 1918, Jünger was forced to call a halt after the guides lost their way, and while bunched together half of his company were lost to a direct hit from artillery. 

Jünger himself survived, and led the survivors as part of a successful advance but was wounded twice towards the end of the action, being shot in the chest and less seriously across the head.

 After convalescing, he returned to his regiment in June, sharing a widespread feeling that the tide had now turned against Germany and victory was impossible.

On 25 August, he was wounded for the seventh and final time near Favreuil, being shot through the lung while leading his company in an advance that was quickly overwhelmed by a British counter-attack.

 Becoming aware the position where he was lying wounded was about to fall to advancing British forces, Jünger rose and as he did his lung drained of fluids through the wound in his chest, allowing him to recover enough to escape.

 He made his way to a machine-gun post that was holding out, where a doctor told him to lie down immediately.

 Carried to the rear in a tarpaulin, he and the bearers came under fire and the doctor was killed.

 A soldier who tried to carry Jünger on his shoulders was killed after only making it a few yards, but another soldier was able to do so.

Jünger received the Wound Badge 1st Class. While he was treated in a Hannover hospital, on 22 September he received notice of being awarded the Pour le Mérite on the recommendation of division commander Johannes von Busse.

 Pour le Mérite, the highest military decoration of the German Empire, was awarded some 700 times during the war, but almost exclusively to high-ranking officers (and seventy times to combat pilots).

 Jünger was one of only eleven infantry company leaders who received the order.

Throughout the war, Jünger kept a diary, which became the basis of his 1920 Storm of Steel.

 He spent his free time reading the works of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Ariosto and Kubin, besides entomological journals he was sent from home.

 During 1917, he was collecting beetles in the trenches and while on patrol, 149 specimens between 2 January and 27 July, which he listed under the title of Fauna coleopterologica douchyensis ("Coleopterological fauna of the Douchy region")