In "Storm of Steel," he became the hero of a generation of young officers who gave everything and, in the end, at best carried away the Iron Cross. Gide praised it as the most beautiful war book I have ever read. In fact, it resembles no other book of that time - no trace of the pastoral meditations of Siegfried Sassoon or Edmund Blunden, no hint of cowardice like Hemingway, no masochism like T. E. Lawrence, and no pity like Remarque. Bruce Chatwin.