The Wicklow mountains - up close

Wicklow in winter

The Wicklow Mountains seen from Dalkey

Ernest Junger

Germany again. Storm of Steel, the classic account of trench warfare by Ernest Junger, in a new translation by Michael Hoffman. Better than any comment, a transcript will give the flavor and the power of the descriptions. This from the first stages of the battle of the Somme:
"Occasionally my ears were utterly deafened by a single fiendish crashing burst of flame. Then incessant hissing gave me the sense of hundreds of pound weights  rushing down at incredible speed, one after the other. Or a dud shell landed with a short , heavy ground-shaking thump. Shrapnels burst by the dozen, like dainty crackers, shook loose their little balls in a dense cloud, , and the empty casings rasped after they were gone. Each time a shell  landed anywhere close the land flew up and down, and metal shards drove themselves into it".
Or this description of the first dead man seen upon arriving at the battlefield:
"A giant form with red blood-spattered beard stared fixedly at the sky, his fingers clutching the spongy ground"
Images, sounds, sensations are conjured in your head, vivid as in a film which you might or might not have seen.