Jünger's first truly literary confrontation with the events of World War I was the novel "Sturm," which was published as a sixteen-part serialized story in a magazine. As it is stated in the fifth chapter, it is a "Decameron of the shelter," as three train conductors meet here in 1916 for "literary and erotic conversations" in their shelter, where the fighting recedes into the background - at least for a moment. The historical circumstances were quite different when the "African Games" were published in 1936. Personal experience and literary fiction are closely intertwined here, as Jünger had joined the Foreign Legion in 1913 at the age of eighteen but was brought back home by his father. A similar fate befalls Herbert Berger, who, weary of his life in Wilhelmine Germany, plunges into the "dangerous life.".