Ruminations From a Business Trip

I had occasion to make another milk run to San Francisco this week. As I’ve noted before, I’m warming to United again. As much as I appreciate the flexibility and convenience of Southwest, sometimes you don’t want to be able to count the hair follicles on the top of the head of the passenger ahead of you. There was enough room in my row that I was able to actually cross my legs (not just my ankles). Plus, the flight up was only about half full, and the flight back still had enough vacancies that the seat next to me was empty. Even better, United allows you to listen to the pilots.

The hotel where I stayed, just south of Candlestick 3Com Monster Park (bleah) offered Town Car service into the city for a couple of bucks more than a taxi. I certainly enjoyed the convenience of not having to worry about calling a taxi and hoping he would pick me up in time to get to court in a timely manner. I also enjoyed calling “my driver” to pick me up when I was done. I realized, however, that I probably gave off exactly the wrong message, if anyone had noticed. There I was, the attorney for an insurance company, involved in a lawsuit with the insured, showing up at a hearing in a dark-windowed limousine. No! It’s not like that! The limo cost the same as a taxi!

Waiting for my flight home, I picked up what seemed to me to be an interesting book. Recognizing that while my knowledge and study of World War II is fairly extensive, my World War I scholarship is seriously deficient, I delved into Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918, World War I and Its Violent Climax," by Joseph Persico. It is written somewhat in the omniscient narrator style of Stephen Ambrose, whose books I’ve greatly enjoyed, in that the book’s narrative relies on first person accounts of many people and presumes to know what they thought, felt and hoped for. Thankfully, it is far less dry, and crafted with more creativity than Rick Atkinson’s “An Army at Dawn : The War in Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy (The Liberation Trilogy, Vol 1),” a thorough but frustratingly plodding account of the Allies’ actions in North Africa in WWII. On the other hand, Persico keeps a greater narrative distance from his subjects, perhaps because, unlike Ambrose, he was unable to interview and get to know them. As a result, his book reads much less like the screenplays that Ambrose’s books sometimes resemble.

(The absolutely stellar HBO production of "Band of Brothers"
is based upon the late Stephen Ambrose’s book of the same name. Ambrose was also an advisor to the producers of “Saving Private Ryan,” and was the driving force behind the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, which I still regret not taking a few hours to visit while I was there in June.)

I had hoped Persico’s book would provide at least some general overview of the Great War, even though it is expressly focused on the last hours of that war. Persico does not disappoint, providing a detailed yet concise account of the genesis of the war. I find that the awkward intersection of ancient dynasties and modern, industrial nation states that resulted in the armed conflict is very interesting and warrants further study. What I find less interesting, halfway through the book as I am, is Persico’s emerging theme that those stuck fighting the war really hated it. This is not a terribly surprising element of the story, considering the true horror that the war of the trenches became. Again, the more interesting aspect of the event is the tragic collision between 19th century warfare-by-parade and 20th century mechanized death-making. Generals parties while privates died, and the privates resented it? Well, yes. Commentary on this point is the least interesting or illuminating aspect of the book.

What is shocking, and the reason I picked up the book, is the fact that although the men in power had signed the armistice early on the morning of November 11, 1918, which fact had been relayed to their troops, strict orders were given to embark on a last attack beginning (depending on the location) within the 10 o’clock hour. Hostilities were not to cease until the agreed-upon hour of 11 a.m. Wow.

I read the opening chapters of the book while listening to Enya’s “Watermark” album on the iPod. “Watermark,” the album of choice for sensitive, romantic college men of half a generation ago, struck what seemed to me to be the appropriate melancholy tone to accompany the senseless slaughter described on the pages before me. After Enya, They Might Be Giants singing about “Particle Man” provided an amusingly discordant soundtrack. Ironically, however, their song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” addresses the name change of that prominent Turkish city, which came about in large part due to the same collapse of historic dynasties that contributed to World War I.

See, it all fits together.