Fall of Giants

Maud was still up, sitting in the drawing room with a candle, the portraits of dead ancestors looking A down on her, the drawn curtains like shrouds, the pieces of furniture around her dimly visible, like beasts in a field at night. For the last few days she had hardly slept. A superstitious foreboding told her Walter would be killed before the war ended.

She sat alone, with a cold cup of tea in her hands, staring into the coal fire, wondering where he was and what he was doing. Was he sleeping in a damp trench somewhere, or preparing for tomorrow’s fighting? Or was he already dead? She could be a widow, having spent only two nights with her husband in four years of marriage. All she could be sure of was that he was not a prisoner of war. Johnny Remarc checked every list of captured officers for her. Johnny did not know her secret: he believed she was concerned only because Walter had been a dear friend of Fitz’s before the war.

The telephone bell startled her. At first she thought it might be a call about Walter, but that would not make sense. News of a friend taken prisoner could wait until morning. It must be Fitz, she thought with agony: could he have been wounded in Siberia?

She hurried out to the hall but Grout got there first. She realized with a guilty start that she had forgotten to give the staff permission to go to bed.

“I will inquire whether Lady Maud is at home, my lord,” Grout said into the apparatus. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and said to Maud: “Lord Remarc at the War Office, my lady.”

She took the phone from Grout and said: “It is Fitz? Is he hurt?”

“No, no,” said Johnny. “Calm down. It’s good news. The Germans have accepted the armistice terms.”

“Oh, Johnny, thank God!”

“They’re all in the forest of Compiègne, north of Paris, on two trains in a railway siding. The Germans have just gone into the dining car of the French train. They’re ready to sign.”

“But they haven’t signed yet?”

“No, not yet. They’re quibbling about the wording.”

“Johnny, will you phone me again when they’ve signed? I shan’t go to bed tonight.”

“I will. Good-bye.”

Maud gave the handset back to the butler. “The war may end tonight, Grout.”

“I’m very happy to hear it, my lady.”

“But you should go to bed.”

“With your ladyship’s permission, I’d like to stay up until Lord Remarc telephones again.”

“Of course.”

“Would you like some more tea, my lady?”

{II}

The Aberowen Pals arrived in Omsk early in the morning.

Billy would always remember every detail of the four-thousand-mile journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok. It had taken twenty-three days, even with an armed sergeant posted in the locomotive to make sure the driver and fireman kept maximum speed. Billy was cold all the way: the stove in the center of the railcar hardly took the chill off the Siberian mornings. They lived on black bread and bully beef. But Billy found every day a revelation.

He had not known there were places in the world as beautiful as Lake Baikal. The lake was longer from one end to the other than Wales, Captain Evans told them. From the speeding train they watched the sun rise over the still blue water, lighting the tops of the mile-high mountains on the far side, the snow turning to gold on the peaks.

All his life he would cherish the memory of an endless caravan of camels alongside the railway line, the laden beasts plodding patiently through the snow, ignoring the twentieth century as it hurtled past them in a clash of iron and a shriek of steam. I’m a bloody long way from Aberowen, he thought at that moment.

But the most memorable incident was a visit to a high school in Chita. The train stopped there for two days while Colonel Fitzherbert parlayed with the local leader, a Cossack chieftain called Semenov. Billy attached himself to a party of American visitors on a tour. The principal of the school, who spoke English, explained that until a year ago he had taught only the children of the prosperous middle class, and that Jews had been banned even if they could afford the fees. Now, by order of the Bolsheviks, education was free to all. The effect was obvious. His classrooms were crammed to bursting with children in rags, learning to read and write and count, and even studying science and art. Whatever else Lenin might have done-and it was difficult to separate the truth from the conservative propaganda-at least, Billy thought, he was serious about educating Russian children.

On the train with him was Lev Peshkov. He had greeted Billy warmly, showing no sense of shame, as if he had forgotten being chased out of Aberowen as a cheat and a thief. Lev had made it to America and married a rich girl, and now he was a lieutenant, attached to the Pals as an interpreter.

The population of Omsk cheered the battalion as they marched from the railway station to their barracks. Billy saw numerous Russian officers on the streets, wearing fancy old-fashioned uniforms but apparently doing nothing military. There were also a lot of Canadian troops.