Having seen Thomas 'Fenian' Keneally interviewed on TV many years ago,after the publication of a novel about Irish politics, & hearing his chippy Australian tones denigrating Great Britain & all who sail under her colours(me included!), I have avoided reading his controversial work - until now. This imaginative historical novel from 1975 is a masterpiece of a 'reconstruction' of the thoughts & feelings of the disparate men - no women, or nurses, here! - who came together in a railway carriage in the forest clearing near Compiegne in November 1918 to 'negotiate' an armistice (though, in reality, the beaten Germans had to accept a humiliating & justified 'diktat'). I visited this site in the 1990s to learn that the carriage itself had been burned by the Germans in 1940, on the orders of Hitler,having witnessed as its final act, the humiliating surrender of the French (again!)in the debacle of the summer of 1940, & Hitler's so-called dance of delight (he had a lovely smile!?).Revenge indeed for the German national disaster of the First World War. Keneally features the doddery French Marshal Foch, the stiff British admiral Wemyss - no idealistic democratic American 'Johnny Come Latelys' here! - arrayed against the civilian 'powers' of Mathias Enzberger & his compatriot military & diplomatic non-entities, who are hastily delegated by an out-going government, with the onerous task of taking the Allied poison without complaint, with Germany in imminent danger of revolution & civil war! Keneally handles the tensions & personality clashes with skill & artistry, throwing bright light into murky corners of our knowledge of the precarious shifting tides of the final days of the Great War.As a student of history, I found his insights & speculations both stimulating & informative.The reader is almost obliged to accept that such momentous events as the November Armistice are often,at the time, seen to be a walk in a forest of dark shadows & fleeting ghosts on a path leading to utter oblivion.The protagonists somehow muddle through to a resolution, leaving them rootless & without further purpose, happy to retire to the pages of History - where Keneally found them almost mummified by time.He gives them back their voices & their place in a moving story of peace bloodily won, a generation of young men lost for ever. Brilliant.
For many reasons I am fascinated by the First World War. It was the true beginning of the 20th century and set the tone and planted the seeds of all that followed. There would have been no Hitler or Soviet Union without this war. It was overshadowed be the one that followed but is was the parent of that war. This novel focuses on the sad little end to the Great War. It gives us the small men who allowed other men to die while they talked. The soldiers in the trenches just wanted it to end, they knew that the war had no meaning and could have no winners, only survivers. The men in that train car wanted victory and wanted to crush the life out of Germany and could not see the human costs they were imposing.
What do You think about Gossip From The Forest (1988)?
It's a fictional presentation of the peace talks that took place in the forest of Compiègne in November 1918. It's written from the point of view of the German negotiator, Mattias Erzberger, a liberal pacifist. Keneally is managing so, to make us aware of the human face of war. The men involved in the peace talks were pitifully human.Interesting true fact; In November 1918 the Engineer in charge of the North Region Railways: Arthur-Pierre Toubeau, was instructed to find a suitably discreet place which would accommodate two trains. By coincidence on the outskirts of Compiègne in the forest of Rethondes lay an artillery railway emplacement. Set deep within the wood and out of the view of the masses the location was ideal.Early in the morning of the 8th November a train carrying Maréchal Ferdinand Foch, his staff and British officers arrived on the siding to the right, nearest the museum. The train formed a mobile headquarters for Foch, complete with a restaurant car and office.At 0700 hours another train arrived on the left hand track. One of the carriages had been built for Napoleon III and still bore his coat of arms. Inside was a delegation from the German government seeking an armistice.There were only a hundred metres between the two trains and the entire area was policed by gendarmes placed every 20 metres.For three days the two parties discussed the terms of an armistice until at 0530 hours on the 11th November 1918, Matthias Erzberger the leader of the German delegation signed the Armistice document.Within 6 hours the war would be over.Initially the carriage (Wagon Lits Company car No. 2419D) used by Maréchal Foch was returned to its former duty as a restaurant car but was eventually placed in the courtyard of the Invalides in Paris.there is a photograph of the carriage here;http://www.flickr.com/photos/mark_vog...
—Velvetink
