In response, the German artillery went quiet.
“Christ Almighty,” Gus said to no one in particular. “I think we’ve beaten them off.”
An American bullet had broken Walter’s shinbone. He lay on the railway line in agony, but he felt worse when he saw the men retreating and heard the guns fall silent. He knew then that he had failed.
He screamed when he was lifted onto the stretcher. It was bad for the men’s morale to hear the wounded cry out, but he could not help it. They bumped him along the track and through the town to the dressing station, where someone gave him morphine and he passed out.
He woke up with his leg in a splint. He questioned everyone who passed his cot on the progress of the battle, but he got no details until Gottfried von Kessel came by to gloat over his wound. The German army had given up trying to cross the Marne at Chateau-Thierry, Gottfried told him. Perhaps they would try elsewhere.
Next day, just before he was put on a train home, he learned that the main body of the United States Third Division had arrived and taken up positions all along the south bank of the Marne.
A wounded comrade told him of a bloody battle in a wood near the town called the Bois de Belleau. There had been terrible casualties on both sides, but the Americans had won.
Back in Berlin, the papers continued to tell of German victories, but the lines on the maps got no nearer to Paris, and Walter came to the bitter conclusion that the spring offensive had failed. The Americans had arrived too soon.
He was released from hospital to convalesce in his old room at his parents’ house.
On August 8 an Allied attack at Amiens used almost five hundred of the new “tanks.” These ironclad vehicles were plagued with problems but could be unstoppable, and the British gained eight miles in a single day.
It was only eight miles, but Walter suspected the tide had turned, and he could tell by his father’s face that the old man felt the same. No one in Berlin now spoke of winning the war.
One night at the end of September, Otto came home looking as if someone had died. There was nothing left of his natural ebullience. Walter even wondered if he was going to cry.
“The kaiser has returned to Berlin,” he said.
Walter knew that Kaiser Wilhelm had been at army headquarters in the Belgian hill resort called Spa. “Why has he come back?”
Otto’s voice dropped to a near-whisper, as if he could not bear to say what he had to say in a normal voice. “Ludendorff wants an armistice.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO – October 1918
Maud had lunch at the Ritz with her friend Lord Remarc, who was a junior minister in the War Office. Johnny was wearing a new lavender waistcoat. Over the pot-au-feu she asked him: “Is the war really coming to an end?”
“Everyone thinks so,” Johnny said. “The Germans have suffered seven hundred thousand casualties this year. They can’t go on.”
Maud wondered miserably if Walter was one of the seven hundred thousand. He might be dead, she knew; and the thought was like a cold lump inside her where her heart should be. She had had no word from him since their idyllic second honeymoon in Stockholm. She guessed that his work no longer took him to neutral countries from which he could write. The awful truth was that he had probably returned to the battlefield for Germany’s last, all- or-nothing offensive.
Such thoughts were morbid, but realistic. So many women had lost their loved ones: husbands, brothers, sons, fiances. They had all lived through four years during which such tragedies happened daily. It was no longer possible to be too pessimistic. Grief was the norm.
She pushed her soup dish away. “Is there any other reason to hope for peace?”
“Yes. Germany has a new chancellor, and he has written to President Wilson, suggesting an armistice based on Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points.”
“That is hopeful! Has Wilson agreed?”
“No. He said Germany must first withdraw from all conquered territories.”
“What does our government think?”
“Lloyd George is hopping mad. The Germans treat the Americans as the senior partners in the alliance-and President Wilson acts as if they could make peace without consulting us.”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m afraid it does. Our government doesn’t necessarily agree with Wilson’s Fourteen Points.”
Maud nodded. “I suppose we’re against point five, about colonial peoples having a say in their own government.”
“Exactly. What about Rhodesia, and Barbados, and India? We can’t be expected to ask the natives’ permission before we civilize them. Americans are far too liberal. And we’re dead against point two, freedom of the seas in war and peace. British power is based on the navy. We would not have been able to starve Germany into submission if we had not been allowed to blockade their seagoing trade.”
“How do the French feel about it?”
Johnny grinned. “Clemenceau said Wilson was trying to outdo the Almighty. ‘God himself only came up with ten points,’ he said.”
“I get the impression that most ordinary British people actually like Wilson and his points.”
Johnny nodded. “And European leaders can hardly tell the American president to stop making peace.”
Maud was so eager to believe it that she frightened herself. She told herself not to be happy yet. There could be such heavy disappointment in store.
A waiter brought them sole Waleska and cast an admiring eye at Johnny’s waistcoat.
Maud turned to her other worry. “What do you hear from Fitz?” Her brother’s mission in Siberia was secret, but he had confided in her, and Johnny gave her bulletins.
“That Cossack leader turned out to be a disappointment. Fitz made a pact with him, and we paid him for a while, but he was nothing more than a warlord, really. However, Fitz is staying on, hoping to encourage the Russians to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Meanwhile, Lenin has moved his government from Petrograd to Moscow, where he feels safer from invasion.”
“Even if the Bolsheviks were deposed, would a new regime resume the war against Germany?”
“Realistically? No.” Johnny took a sip of Chablis. “But a lot of very powerful people in the British government just hate the Bolsheviks.”
“Why?”
“Lenin’s regime is brutal.”
“So was the tsar’s, but Winston Churchill never plotted to overthrow him.”
“Underneath, they’re frightened that if Bolshevism is a success over there it will come here next.”
“Well, if it’s a success, why not?”
Johnny shrugged. “You can’t expect people such as your brother to see it that way.”
“No,” said Maud. “I wonder how he’s getting on?”
“We’re in Russia!” Billy Williams said when the ship docked and he heard the voices of the longshoremen. “What are we doing in fucking Russia?”
“How can we be in Russia?” said Tommy Griffiths. “Russia’s in the east. We’ve been sailing west for weeks.”
“We’ve gone halfway round the world and come at it from the other side.”
Tommy was not convinced. He leaned over the rail, staring. “The people look a bit Chinesey,” he said.
