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| Greenfield Public Library. Click to Visit. |
As the observance of the Great War Centennial wheels around to another
Veterans Day, I will be offering, with Chuck Muckle, a dramatized
reading from my historical novel Flower
of Iowa that also features WWI-era music at the Greenfield Public Library
in Greenfield, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, November 1. Details are here; the event is free and open
to all.
It is, as always, striking to look back at what happened 100 years ago,
and discern how very much the First World War is still with us today. In this
case, I would like to home in on three events that took place over the course
of eight days a century ago.
On the 31st of October, 1917, the British began a
surprise attack against Turkish defensive lines stretching between Gaza and
Beersheba in southern Palestine, aided by a group of fighters led by one T. E. Lawrence
— better known to us now as Lawrence of Arabia — who played a key role in the
Arab uprising against the Ottoman Turks.
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| T. E. Lawrence — aka Lawrence of Arabia |
Seven days later, the
village of Passchendaele
in Belgium was captured by Canadian troops, bringing to an end a months-long battle
that had caused 500,000 casualties on both sides, with no significant gains for
either.
On the other side of Europe, that same evening, the Bolsheviks overthrew the democratic
Provisional Government that had been established in Russia after the fall of
the Czar earlier in the year, and established a decidedly non-democratic Soviet
government based on Marxism.
For the characters in Flower of Iowa, these three seemingly disparate events have
profound effects. The British/Arab
victories in the Middle East, and the decision of Soviet Russia to leave the
war, mean that by the time the novel’s lead character, Tommy Flowers, arrives
in France in 1918, Germany has been able to throw its full weight into a final
offensive in an attempt to rout the Allies on the Western Front.
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| THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES © IWM (E(AUS) 715* |
Tommy’s comrade, British soldier David
Pearson, who has lost a brother at Passchendaele, is part of the stiff British
resistance that has stalled that offensive, and Tommy is part of the American
Army that helps to turn the tide in the Allies’ favor — exactly what the German
High Command feared, and caused them to throw the dice on the aforementioned
offensive in the first place.
By the same token, all three events continue to echo
in our world today, where the unresolved aftershocks of the Arab drive for
self-determination are still felt in Gaza and Palestine, and well beyond; where
the horrific memory of Passchendaele continues to feed antiwar movements,
especially in Europe; and where Vladimir Putin bases his every geopolitical
move with the memory of both the Czar and the Bolsheviks ever fresh in his
mind.
“Living history” may seem like a cliché, but we
are indeed still living with the reverberations of the events of those fateful eight
days a century ago.
