Most of what I read (or hear) about World War I emphasizes the incredible casualties, both in absolute numbers and in relative numbers. The tone often seems to suggest that if a soldier spent enough time at the front line, it was only a matter of time before he was killed. Do we know of anyone who survived all four years of front-line warfare? (If this was actually pretty common, that's what I'm curious about.)
I understand that nobody spent the entire war right on the front line and that there were rotations onto and off the line. But within the framework of that regular rotation schedule, did anyone survive all four years of combat on the Western Front?
Ernst Jünger, who authored "Stahlgewittern" (translated into English as "Storm of Steel") probably comes close to fitting the bill. He volunteered to join the German army in August of 1914, and he was "active" in combat between April 1915 through August 1918. He participated as one of the shock troops* during the Spring Offensive, and in August of 1918 he was wounded and sat out the last 3 months of the war recuperating.
So he was in the military from very close to the start of the war through its end, and he had a whole lot of combat experience (which he wrote about extensively in his book), although he wasn't "on the front lines" through the entirety of the war. I think that's about as good as it gets.
*EDIT: This originally read "Storm Troopers," which /u/DuxBelisarius helpfully pointed out as a mistranslation of "Stosstruppen," which is more accurately translated as "shock troops." The "Storm Troopers" ("Sturm Abteilung") were Hitler's brown-shirts during his later reign.
I've given some answers previously, which should help: