What are some other memoirs of WW1 worth a read?

>>21981019 (OP)

Gonna repost my faggy thoughts on some WWI books I read:



>'The Comedy of Charleroi' by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle

probably the WWI memoir I enjoyed the most. the way the narrator vacillates between cynicism and enthusiasm, is at different turns a deserter and a decorated hero, struck me as very psychologically accurate. doesn't shy away from the grimy, cloacal aspects of war, the constant dysentery, etc. at times the narrator is grating, but he's young (and french). captures the disaffection of the war generation very well, and you can see hints of rochelle's future evolution from pacifism to nonconformist fascism. when asked about his politics by another officer, he says, succinctly, "I am against old men."



>'Storm of Steel' by Ernst Jünger

less captivating than I'd hoped it would be, but somebody more interested in military tactics and movements and that sort of shit might find the sections that I found dull interesting. the moments where the narrator is plunged into alien realities are the standout parts of the book, and what I'd hoped for more of. Jünger is very good at capturing what extreme experience is like, moments untethered from all ordinary frames of reference. you can see why he dabbled in psychedelics later in life.



>'Goodbye to All That' by Robert Graves

I found the early sections dealing with Graves' childhood and school life a lot more interesting than his war experiences, which tended to drag on for me. his memories of victorian imperial glory, his early holidays with distant family in Germany, his innocent romance with another boy, are all tinged with tragic sensibility because of our knowledge of the looming inferno. he writes with blackly comic, hard-edged realism, which prevents his indignation from ever degenerating into a moral lecture, but I kind of disliked the coarse person the war turned Graves into, and was glad finally to finish the book. ironically, despite Graves' liberalism, Junger and Celine strike me as more humanistic. his commentary on front line soldiers' impatience with religion is an interesting corrective to the 'no atheists in foxholes' line.



I'd like to read Seven Pillars of Wisdom sometime. Also, the chapter called 'The Nightmare' in DH Lawrence's 'Kangaroo' about the humiliations he and his German wife endured on the homefront is quite enlightening (you can read it standalone from the rest of the book without any problem, look up Kangaroo on Gutenberg).

>>21981019 (OP)

I could literally not stop laughing when Jünger was drawn off the line (along with all the other sons of the aristocracy) just before a major offensive, to participate in some meme middle-management seminar on troop tactics, where he just got blindly drunk and banged whores, and then remarks casually that 95% of his unit was destroyed during that offensive.

He is so based, and I think Storm of Steel is my favorite picaresque novel - he is such a lovable swindler and rogue. Even better, this legacy lives on - even in death, he is pulling the tail of his Sabaton-listening fanboys, who actually dream of a life where they are his orderlies, sent to repair telegraph lines in no-man's land, to his great existential horror, as he sits in his CP 1000 yards behind the front and gorges himself on cheese and wine.
