The War Novel

June 13, 2023. Along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal

There’s something so … unprincipled about World War One, I realize on my run.

I’m listening to The Fall of Giants by Ken Follett, a sprawling novel that tracks members of early 20th century nations steeped in lust and anguish and war. Before this novel, all the books backgrounded by war that I’ve read revolve around WWII and the Holocaust. And outside of being the first novel I’ve read about World War One, The Fall of Giants is also my first “war novel”. The books I’ve read about WWII — Slaughterhouse 5 and Maus and The Book Thief, among others — are not war novels, as much as The Old Man and the Sea is not a fishing tutorial. From them, I’ve learned of evil and trauma and death. I’ve learned nothing of war except its capability to create evil and trauma and death. But Follett’s novel is thick with war. It seethes with Obstinate Generals and Capricious Politicians and Hardened Soldiers and Forlorn Wives. With paragraphs scouting out war tactics and political power struggles, the book tries to chip at my eternal incomprehension of this dirty little game we play.

This war novel distinction feels tied to the nature of the two world wars. Despite the world finding out about the Holocaust ex-ante, history novelizes the Allies’ war effort against Hitler in biblical parlance. Indeed, in this script, Hitler is Satan, Auschwitz is Hell, and Roosevelt/Churchill are alternatively cast as Jesus. So: WWII is meaningful. Few wars can lay such a claim — its predecessor certainly cannot. The trenches, filled with human rot, stagnate romantic notions of valiance and heroism. There’s no divine interference. It’s just clay people beating themselves back into the earth.

But there’s one image from the retched Great War that honors our clay origins. It’s 1914. Winter has scabbed the scars that sweep across the French and German fronts. Men arise from Mother Earth’s wounds and stumble across her pimples to meet on a browned sea of tranquility. The blood-soaked ground beneath their feet is laden with bullets sent for their friends heads. Even years later, these men will see Death in their sleep.

But today, it’s Christmas.

Soldiers exchange unintelligible season’s greetings, their tongues slipping over broken speech, their ears straining for familiar syllables. The curse of Babel endures but the men pay it no mind. They trade instead in the languages of humanity: smiles, hugs, presents. And, soccer. The men wallop and cheer and shit-talk, scrambling over land littered by remnants of their dead comrades. A friendly game wins over the deadly one.

It’s a human moment. There’s no God, no Satan. When these men sing hymns, they call to a lord who has long abandoned them.