VIENNA: Freud has survived his sixty-first year. ‘There is indeed no relying on the supernatural’, he writes to a friend, as if he had never been worried at all.
Planning for the all-important annual summer break is well under way. It is much harder than in peacetime. All the decent guesthouses are full of convalescing soldiers, it seems. Civilian postal communications across the empire are worse than usual. Freud outsources the whole wretched business to a colleague in Budapest, requesting that he arrange a return visit to the mountainous Csorba region which Freud enjoyed the year before. Warm weather (but not too hot), Hungarian food supplies and time to think: this is all that Freud asks for.
Emperor Charles is forced to write a begging letter to Wilhelm around this time. He asks for at least two thousand freight cars full of grain, warning that the Austrian army will starve without them.
PERM, SIBERIA: Michael Romanov is abducted from his hotel in Perm by members of the local Cheka.
In a forest outside town, the Tsar’s brother is shot at close range with a Browning pistol. The rumour is spread that he has escaped. Over the next few weeks, he is variously reported to be living in the governor’s house in Omsk from where he leads a monarchist campaign or else doing something similar in Turkestan.
The vagueness suits the Bolsheviks. A dead man cannot lead a real rebellion. But rumours he is alive will stop a rival from seeking to claim the mantle of the Romanovs.
GIZAUCOURT, FRANCE: Noble Sissle hears that Jim Europe has been caught up in a German gas attack, and taken to a hospital a few miles behind the lines. He rushes to see him.
He is shocked by what he finds: men gasping for breath, mouths covered in sores, bleeding scabs instead of eyes. Lieutenant Europe himself seems fine. He is coughing quite a bit, of course, and there is no way of knowing whether there may be further damage to his insides. (Poison gas is tricky like that–less honest than a bullet or a bomb.) He is in fine spirits, in any case. He has a new idea for a song, with a syncopated chorus. He shows it to the boys.
Alert! Gas! Put on your mask
Adjust it correctly and hurry up fast
Drop! There’s a rocket for the Boche barrage
Down! Hug the ground close as you can
Don’t stand! Creep and crawl
Follow me, that’s all
What do you hear, nothing near
Don’t fear, all’s clear
That’s the life of a stroll
When you take a patrol out in No Man’s Land
Ain’t life great out in No Man’s Land
AHRENSHOOP, THE GERMAN REICH: Albert spends the summer holidays with Elsa on the Baltic. ‘No telephone, no responsibilities, absolute tranquillity’, he writes to a friend; ‘I am lying on the shore like a crocodile, allow myself to be roasted by the sun, never see a newspaper, and whistle at the so-called world.’ He reads Kant for relaxation.
In Zurich, his son Hans-Albert is disappointed that his father has abandoned him for the summer. ‘Wasn’t it nice last year?’ he asks. Fourteen now, he fills his time accompanying the ladies in the apartment block on the piano and dreaming up plans for an aerial tramway.
PETROGRAD–MOSCOW: Russia’s cities are starving. People struggle to stand up straight from hunger. Skin becomes translucent, as if made of wax. The question of how to fill one’s stomach dictates everything else. A new rationing system is introduced, dividing Petrograd’s population into four categories: the industrial proletariat, white-collar employees such as doctors and teachers, the intelligentsia and artists, and the scum of the earth: the bourgeoisie. Categorisation determines survival.
Items once considered valuable are now worthless; things commonplace are now priceless. All is for sale on the street: old rugs from imperial campaigns in Turkestan, gold-framed mirrors which once reflected the gay dancing of the cavalry officers and their belles, pianos, pillowcases, individual lumps of sugar. In one case, a single boot is offered for sale. ‘Are there so few one-legged people around?’ the vendor retorts when challenged. Local Chekas proliferate around the country, bands of heavies motivated by the thrill of power and opportunities for extortion as much as any revolutionary zeal for social cleansing. Gangster criminality is dressed up as class warfare. Support for the Bolsheviks within the Soviets falls. The country slips further into civil war. Lenin’s rivals start to circle. Moscow is full of plotters.
‘Today, after two months’ close observation I can no longer give a positive diagnosis to Bolshevism’, Count Mirbach writes to Berlin. ‘The patient is dangerously ill and in spite of occasional improvements, his fate is preordained.’ While it should remain on good terms with the Bolsheviks until the last minute, Germany must prepare for their collapse. There is a risk the Socialist Revolutionaries will come to power, repudiate Brest-Litovsk and relaunch the war. Mirbach recommends that he seek to improve relations with pro-Germans on Russia’s political right to counter this. The map drawn at Brest-Litovsk may have to be redrawn. ‘Nothing can be had for absolutely free’, he warns.
A short while later Count Mirbach is murdered in broad daylight at the German embassy. The details of the assassination plot are unclear. The killer appears to be a Cheka agent. But operating on whose orders? Within minutes of learning of the atrocity, Lenin firmly points the finger of blame at the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, the group which splintered from the Socialist Revolutionaries after the coup of 1917 to support the Bolsheviks, but whom Lenin has now fallen out with over his acceptance of the Carthaginian peace of Brest-Litovsk. He claims that the ambassador’s assassination was the signal for a long-planned Left Socialist Revolutionary uprising. Whether that assertion is true or not, Lenin spies an opportunity to strike hard against his enemies in response.
There is the small matter of diplomatic etiquette to attend to first. Vladimir Lenin, enemy of capitalism, scourge of imperialism, unflinching promoter of the worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat, goes to the imperial German embassy to sign the condolence book for the slain aristocrat. In private, the impatient revolutionary jokes with his associates about the appropriate German word to use in such circumstances. In public, he pulls his face into a mask of horror at what has happened to ensure that the diplomatic telegrams sent back to the Kaiser report no trace of Schadenfreude. Once this painful task has been completed, Vladimir can return to domestic affairs. Soviet delegates from across Russia and from across the revolutionary spectrum are currently in session in the Bolshoi Theatre. Lenin orders loyal troops to cordon off the building. Bolshevik supporters inside are allowed to leave by the back door. The rest–Lenin’s political opponents–are kept prisoner.
Left Socialist Revolutionaries protest their incarceration. Their operatives outside the Bolshoi take the head of the Cheka hostage in response. Several buildings are occupied. But such actions are isolated, reactive, uncoordinated. If this is an insurrection, it is a very poorly executed one. The last redoubt of Left Socialist Revolutionary rebels is soon under siege by Latvian troops loyal to the Bolsheviks. Artillery shells smash through the walls of the old mansion where the rebels are holed up. Later that day, the impatient revolutionary himself comes to inspect the damage, crushing pieces of broken glass under the soles of his shoes.
Opposition parties are suppressed. The Congress of Soviets becomes a Bolshevik-only institution.
FOSSALTA DI PIAVE, ITALY: In early July, the inevitable happens: Hemingway gets his war wound, while handing out chocolate, cigars and postcards to Italian troops along the front line.
One soldier beside him is killed by the explosion of an Austrian mortar. Another has both legs blown off. Ernest, furthest away from the blast, is peppered with shrapnel, knocked unconscious and buried under a pile of earth. But he isn’t dead. Not even close. Not Hemingway. Instinct kicks in. Ernest struggles back to the first-aid station, under fire, carrying an Italian soldier in his arms. There, he is given a shot of morphine to ease the pain. Just a few weeks into the war, and Oak Park’s brightest son is awarded one of Italy
’s highest medals of honour. His photograph appears in the Chicago Daily Tribune, although the article misspells his name (not for the last time) as Hemenway. Ernest’s grandfather, a veteran of the American Civil War, pastes it all into his scrapbook.
Now things get even better. Ernest is sent to recuperate in Milan, in a small, rather luxurious hospital occupying a single floor of a grand mansion in the best part of the city. Hemingway can see the dome of the cathedral from the porch; the offices of Il Popolo d’Italia are not far away. The shrapnel wounds he has received–over two hundred perforations–and a few bullet injuries turn out to be nothing serious for the young man, medically speaking. A long period of recuperation is advisable, but no amputations are necessary. Hemingway is able to dig some of the shrapnel out of his legs himself, using a penknife. While in hospital, he keeps himself well stocked with cognac, and contrives to fall in love with one of the nurses looking after him, an American called Agnes. She thinks Ernie rather a sweet boy, and takes the night shift so that she can talk to him more. Later they go to the opera and the races together, and write to each other furiously–sometimes a letter every day–claiming to be deeply in love.
To the folks back home, Ernest writes in the same jocular tone as always. And why not? For the price of what amounts, in relative terms, to a few scratches, he finds himself a war hero. Rather than denting his pride, or giving him a sense of his own mortality, the incident has made young Ernest feel more invincible than ever. Not like the rest of the poor bastards left on the front line, he reflects. He tells his family about the souvenirs he has managed to collect: ‘Austrian carbines and ammunition, German and Austrian medals, officers’ automatic pistols, Boche helmets, about a dozen bayonets, star-shell pistols and knives and almost everything you can think of.’ The only limit to what he could take, Ernest explains to his family, is what he could carry with him: ‘There were so many dead Austrians and prisoners, the ground was almost black with them.’
Hemingway is in no hurry to get home. He hopes to be driving ambulances by the end of the summer.
KARLSBAD, BOHEMIA, THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE: A striking-looking Turkish gentleman with a kidney complaint arrives in the society spa town of Karlsbad, sent there by Professor Zuckerkandl of Vienna, a member of one of the empire’s best-connected Jewish medical families. Karlsbad is one of those places where Europe’s beau monde used to congregate before the war. It is full of grand hotels. There is a faint smell of sulphur in the air.
Mustafa Kemal gets off on the wrong foot with Dr Vermer, the local doctor he has been assigned. The Turkish national hero complains that the apartment rented for him and his servant at the Rudolfshof is a little small. He preferred the look of the Grandhotel Pupp. Vermer replies, a little testily: ‘Have you come here for a serious cure, or to enjoy and tire yourself in splendour?’ Not a good start. The doctor asks Kemal if he has brought his own flour supply with him and when the confused Turk answers in the negative, Vermer informs him that in Austria the authorities are only required to hand out flour to locals, not foreigners. He will have to do without bread. Turkish hospitality, Kemal retorts, means that foreigners consume more than locals. If he is not to have bread in Karlsbad he will return to Istanbul at once and advise the Sultan to curtail the bread given to foreign guests.
There is a pause. Kemal is a proud man. He is not used to being treated this way. Vermer tries to smooth things over by asking his new patient if there are other generals as young as him in Turkey. The brigadier general replies gracefully that it is the war conditions in his country which require one so young to fulfil a post so elevated. At last, a little politesse. The entire conversation takes place in French.
It is not the only awkward encounter in Kemal’s first few days in Karlsbad. By rights, of course, he should feel quite at home. He has travelled with an Ottoman Prince to meet the German Kaiser. He has lived the high life in Bulgaria. He knows French. He has worn fancy dress. Though of a somewhat authoritarian disposition, he regards himself as a social liberal. He considers himself a European gentleman as well as a proud Turk. And yet he lives in fear of putting his foot wrong somehow, of embarrassing himself in front of Europeans who may see only the Turkish and not the European side of his identity. On one of his first nights in town Kemal finds himself sitting down for dinner at the Imperial Hotel, a little early, perhaps. As more people start coming into the restaurant than there are tables available, he begins to panic. ‘A distress, a sadness, a freak invaded my soul’, he admits to his diary. Is he allowed to be there? Should he have reserved? Is the restaurant only for hotel guests? The general takes up the matter confidentially with his doctor the next day. He is reassured: the dining room has a free-seating policy.
Kemal settles into a routine. His daytime treatments involve a mud bath (every day) and a compress (every second day). He is required to drink large quantities of mineral water from the springs; his servant has the bright idea of filling up thermoses so his master can drink the stuff in bed. In the time when he is not horizontal, the general starts taking German lessons and reads improving books, including a critique of Marx’s Das Kapital, in French. He soon finds the other Turks in the resort. In the course of his first week, he runs into the wife of Djemal Pasha, an army colonel and his wife, and an old friend from the military academy in Salonika. He compares rooms with his friend and, having ascertained that his is better, Kemal invites him over for a cup of coffee.
One evening, after exchanging war stories with the Turkish colonel and his wife over dinner, and discussing what makes a good general–the will to win, the ability to make decisions and then take responsibility for them, rather than blaming everything on one’s subordinates–the group stroll onto the veranda and watch young European ladies dancing with their male suitors, dressed in dinner jackets. (Kemal, who generally wears his military uniform or a dark suit in the evenings, makes a mental note of the attire.) The colonel’s wife comments how difficult it is for such modern European attitudes to take root back home. The general turns on his heels: ‘I always say that if I one day obtain great authority and power I think I will be able to implement the desired revolution in our social life by a coup–in an instant.’ He does not believe in gradualism, he declares, or pandering to popular prejudices or so-called Islamic rules. There can be no compromise: ‘Why should I lower myself to the level of the ignorant when I received higher education for many years?’ No, he insists, ‘I shall bring their levels to mine; I won’t be like them, they will be like me.’ Women, he says, should be better educated: ‘Let us ornament their minds with science and knowledge’.
On another occasion, Kemal finds himself arguing with a Turkish woman who tells him that daughters should be kept illiterate so they cannot challenge their mother’s authority. If the generations are not more educated from one to the next, the general angrily ripostes, how will progress ever occur? Asked about his attitude to marriage, the bachelor war hero rather daringly quotes the French playwright Marcel Prévost: ‘Le mariage est une chose, l’amour est une autre chose’–marriage is one thing, and love another. He will not get married until he is sure that he knows which is which. Perhaps he is already too old anyway, he says. Mustafa Kemal is thirty-seven. (For years he has had an on–off relationship with the daughter of his stepfather’s brother: a romantic young woman named Fikriye.)
It is in Karlsbad that Kemal learns that the Sultan has died in Istanbul and Prince Vahdettin, whom he accompanied to Germany last year, has succeeded him. Immediately, Kemal’s mind is onto politics. He jots down the main questions in his diary. How does Djemal get his money? What is the relationship between Djemal and Talaat? What is Enver’s attitude towards himself, Mustafa Kemal? What is the new Sultan’s approach likely to be? He kicks himself for not having paid a courtesy call to Vahdettin before he left.
But he does not return home immediately. Mustafa Kemal is beginning to enjoy himself in Karlsbad. He starts avoiding his daily mud-bath treatments (without telling Dr Vermer). On the firs
t day of Ramadan he takes a car trip with his German teacher, Mademoiselle Brandner, to visit a china factory. A few days later, his landlady invites him to a concert. He takes French lessons from a blind Swiss woman, although he asks his diary what on earth has motivated him to agree to lessons from a lady who can neither read nor correct anything he writes.
On another trip out of town with Miss Brandner, she asks him about the Ottoman army, expressing surprise that there are enough men to fill its ranks after all the wars it has had to fight: against the Italians in Libya back in 1911, against the Bulgarians, the Greeks and others in the Balkans, and now the current war against the Russian Empire, the British, and recently the Armenians in the Caucasus. Kemal praises Enver Pasha for getting rid of, as he puts it, ‘the old pieces of cloth’ in the Ottoman army. He has made things much more efficient, he explains, more modern.
Without the Ottoman army, Kemal boasts, Germany would not be standing now and the British and the French would already be victorious. He bemoans the fact that the Turkish contribution is so little understood–even at home.
SPA: Once more German troops are sent forward into battle by their masters. But the French have the measure of Ludendorff’s new storm tactics by now. They understand how to counteract its impact: by absorbing the blow with a system of deep defence. The French even know the time of the planned attack, having learned it from prisoners. A few minutes before the German bombardment is due to begin, at the very moment that the German trenches are most crowded, the French artillery opens up. The impact is devastating. The subsequent German attack is stopped within hours.
And here’s another innovation for 1918: a combination of American and French divisions (including one from North Africa) spearheads a well-planned and well-executed counter-attack. There is no artillery barrage to signal Allied intentions. This time, the assault relies not on the weight of munitions fired at the enemy, but on the element of surprise. The night before the counter-attack, a heavy thunderstorm covers the gathering of men and munitions in the village of Villers-Cotterêts (before the war, Baedeker recommended ‘pleasant excursions’ in the village forest). On the morning of the attack, smoke shells are fired into the fields through which French and American troops will move forward. Allied tanks, hidden under camouflage, suddenly come out of nowhere.
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