Frau Hoftein: shop owner in Windhoek
Frau Mathais: Markus’s mother
Freidl Levi: Levi’s mother
Herr Leopold: German trading company owner in Portuguese East Africa
Horst Dorfmann: railway worker in German East Africa
Humboldt Conrad: son of Tomas Conrad
Ilsa Levi: Levi’s sister
Joseph Schrager: German businessman and exporter, Tabora, German East Africa
Katherina Levi: Levi’s wife
Le Ling: Markus’s former love interest in China
Lieutenant Andre Rosenbloom: German officer of train, German East Africa
Lieutenant Markus Mathais: electrical unit officer of the 1st Battalion, for Lower Bavaria, headquartered in Munich
Lieutenant Rolf Kepler: North Bavarian medical corps, Anji’s boyfriend
Lieutenant Siegfried Schleiffer: pilot, German Southwest Africa
Michael and Norbert Conrad: twin sons of Tomas Conrad
Mina Schrager: Joseph’s wife
Otto Levi: Levi’s father
Petre: black housekeeper and cook at Conrad ranch
Portuguese Corporal Carlos Verdi
Portuguese Lieutenant Nunos
Professor Dr. Schellenberger: University Of Munich historian and archeologist
Professor Warner Lange: American electrical engineer
Rashid: Indian manservant to Joseph Schrager There is no last name
Rebecca Levi: Levi’s daughter
Rudy, Helmut, and Rainer: military comrades of Markus
Sambolo: black stable boy at Conrad ranch
Sidney Lancaster: big game hunter in German East Africa, employed by Schrager
Sisibeco: young, black African woman of the BoTonga people
Solomon Levi: engineer, called Levi (later, Captain),
Tomas Conrad: widowed German rancher in German South West Africa
Wan Ling: Le Ling’s father
Willie: orphan, stable boy, and farm hand at Kalvarianhof
Wolfgang Conrad: eldest son of Tomas Conrad
Bibliography
Abbot, W. The Nations at War. New York: Leslie-Judge Co., 1918.
Abbot, W. J. (1915). The Nations at War. London: Syndicate Pub. Co.
Anderson, R. (2004). The Forgotten Front, East Africa. Gloucestershire: Tempus. Barraclough, G. (1982). Concise Atlas of World History. New Jersey: Hammond Inc.
Clark, A. (1971). Suicide of the Empires. New York.: American Heritage Press.
Craig, G. A. (1982). The Germans. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Critchler, S. (2008). The Book of Dead Philosophers. New York.: Random House. Daniel, C. E. (1975). Chronicle of the 20th Century. New York.: Dorling Kindersley.
Dendooven, C. &. (2008). World War I, Five Continents in Flanders. Belgium: Lannoo.
Diamond, J. (2005). Africa. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Mag.
Dooly, J. W. (1970). Great Weapons of W.W. One. New York: Bonanza Books.
Editors, T. (1915). The Times History of the War, Europe. New York.: Woodward & Van Slyke Inc.
Editors. (2004 to 2015). Auktion, Hermann Historica. Munchen, Bavaria, Germany: Hermann Historica
Editors, C. (1916). Collier’s Photographic History of the European War. New York: Collier and Son. Editors, T. (1915). The Times History of the War, Land & Sea. New York: Woodward & Van Slyke Inc.
FitzLyon, B. &. (1978). Before the Revolution. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press.
Fromkin, D. (2004). Europe’s Last Summer. New York: Alfred Knopf.
Funcken, F. &. (1974). Arms and Uniforms, WW1. London: Ward Lock.
Gilbertert, M. (1970). Atlas of the First World War. New York: Oxford Univ.
Giles, F. &. (2005). Mini and Toutou’s Big Adventure. New York: Alfred Knopf.
Gliddon, G. (2005). The Sideshows. Gloucestershire, Eng.: Sutton Pub.
Keegan, J. (1998). The First World War. New York: Alfred Knopf.
Keegan, L. (1971). Opening Moves, August 1914. New York: Ballantine.
Krebs, C. B. (2011). A Most Dangerous Book, Tacitus’s Germania. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Laffin, J. (1965). Jackboot, Hist. of the German Soldier 1713-1945. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Lobsenz, N. (1960). Africa. New York: Golden Press.
Lyford, G. &. (2005). Germany. New York:
Dorling Kindersley. Grun, B. (1979). The Timetables of History. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Hadenberger, W. (1915). Deutschland’s Croberung Der Luft. Berlin: Berlag Hermann Montanus. Haupt, W. (1984). Deutschland’s Schutzgebiete in Ubersee 1884-1918. Friedberg, Ger,: Podzum.
Hill-Norton. (1915). Official Navel Dispatches. Dewsbury, England: Fernmoor Pub.
Hochschild, A. (1998). King Leopold’s Ghost. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Inman & Macdonald, E. (2000). Jerusalem & the Holy Land. New York: Dorling Kindersley. Madddocks, S. &. (1975). The Imperial German Army 1900-1918. London: Almark Pub.
Marshall, S. (1964). American Heritage Hist. Of World War One. New York: American Heritage Pub.
Martel, G. (2003). The Origins of the First World War. Essex, Eng.: Person Edu. Limited. Mason, D. (1972). Churchill 1914-1918. New York: Ballantine.
Messenger, C. (1972). Trench Fighting 1914-1918. New York: Ballantine.
Muller, K. &. (2009). German Colonial Troops 1889-1918. Vienna, Austria Verlag Militaria Pub.Nicholas II, the Imperial Family. (1998). St. Petersburg, Rus.: Abris Pub.
Perkins, J. (1981). To The Ends of the Earth. New York: Pantheon Books.
Persico, J. (2004). Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour. New York: Random House. Postman, F. (1979). The Yiddish Alphabet Book. Palo Alto, Ca: P’Nye Press.
Reimer, Dietrich, Kriegskarte von Deutsch-Sudwestafrika 1904. (War maps)
Reynolds, E. &. (2000). Kingdom of the Soul. New York: Prestel.
Robinson, J. &. (2009). Handbook of Imperial Germany. Bloomington, Ind.: Author House. Semenov, N. (1998). Nicholas Romanov, Life and Death. St. Petersburg, Russia: Liki Rossii Pub.
Sibley, J. R. (1971). Tanganyikan Guerrilla, E. Africa Campaign 1914-18. New York.: Ballantine. Smith, W. (2010). Assegai. London: Pan Macmillan.
Solzhenitsyn, A. (1983). August, 1914. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Strachen, H. (2004). The First World War in Africa. New York: Oxford Univ. Press
Sleicher, John A. (1918). Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, August 17, 1918 edition, London.
Sturmer, M. (2000). The German Empire 1870-1918. New York: Random House.
Tantum, H. &. (1968). German Army, Navy Uniforms 1871-1918. Greenwich, Conn.: We, Inc. Taylor, A. (1963). Illus. History First World War. London: George Rainbird.
Thoeny, E. (1899). Der Leutnant. Muenchen, Ger.: Albert Langen
Tuchman, B. W. (1958). The Zimmermann Telegram. New York: Ballantine.
White, W. E. (1967). By-Line: Ernest Hemingway. New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons.
Williamson, G. (1994). The Iron Cross. Denison, Texas: Reddick.
Willmott, H. (2003). World War One. New York: Dorling Kindersley.
Winter, B. &. (1996). The Great War. New Yor: Penguin Books.
Woolley, C. (2009). Uniforms of the German Colonial Troops. Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Military History.
Descendants of Abraham Levi
Descendants of Captain George Mathias
Descendants of Wolfgang Conrad
For your pleasure, here are the first 7 Chapters of
The Long Way Home
Book III of the Kalvarianhof Series
Kalvarianhof, February, 1919
CHAPTER 1
Bavaria, Winter 1919
Kalvarianhof, the grand manor house and farm of the Levi family in the forests near Munich in Bavaria, Germany, was a white wonderland to the eye in February.
It was 1919. Foot-thick snow, untouched in its purity, blanketed the house, the out buildings, and surrounding landscape. The only tracks in the icy, white powder
led from the barn to the woods where timber harvesting continued through the winter.
The horse-drawn sled dragged the cut logs easily to the clearing where they would lie, stacked for drying, for a year. Wood smoke rose from two Kalvarianhof chimneys, creating a blue haze in the cold air.
In earlier years, before the Great War, the Levis burned mostly coal. But now, with the country bled dry of resources by the carnage of the war, inflation, and the miners’ strikes for higher wages, even coal had become a luxury. Otto Levi, always wise where his Imperial marks were concerned, switched to the unlimited supply of free wood fuel on the estate.
They had weathered the war better than most, with the rich resources of the farm and forest. Paper money was less valuable by the day, so Otto and Freidl had taken to bartering, like so many other Germans. Otto, early on, sensing the economic dangers of the war, had gathered a considerable amount of Imperial gold coin and hidden it away in the undercroft of the old manor house, before the Kaiser converted gold marks to paper money. Otto made it a point not to reveal his precious secret, feeling secure in the knowledge that it was there when needed.
Now they waited for word from their son Levi, away for over five years serving as an officer in Kaiser Wilhelm II’s East African Colonial Forces. Five long years had passed, and the world had changed forever. Rebecca, Levi’s daughter, was now seven-years-old, and while Katherina, his wife, spoke constantly of Levi, he remained an unknown stranger to the little girl.
For months, the newspapers had articles about homeward-bound soldiers, lists of names of those returning and those who were never to be seen again. The telegram only stated that Levi was safe and would be arriving by ship from Africa sometime in early 1919.
One snowy afternoon, the telephone rang in the front parlor at Kalvarianhof and was picked up by Freidl, Levi’s mother. “Ja, good day … What, operator? I can’t hear you … long distance? Where?”
Her heart beat faster as little Rebecca ran up to her grandmama. “I want to talk too!” she shouted. “Who is it? … Is it for me?”
“Berlin? Oh, my! Otto, Otto! It’s a call from Berlin! Hurry, dear, hurry!”
Otto came scurrying in, favoring a sprained ankle. “Who is it, Freidl? From Berlin?”
Rebecca, sensing the excitement, started jumping up and down. “Me too!” she shouted.
“Oh, my God!” Freidl burst into tears. “Levi, Levi, it’s really you! Oh, my son, my son … your voice.” She couldn’t talk through her sobs.
Otto grabbed the receiver, but Freidl was reluctant to let it go. “Go get Kathi, quick, quick!” he urged as he put the receiver to his ear and heard a storm of static.
“Hello? Hello? Operator, I can’t hear a thing.” Through the crackle of the copper wires swaying in winter storms between Berlin and the family estate in Bavaria, Otto finally heard his son’s voice for the first time in five years.
“Papa, Papa!” Levi blurted out. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Levi, my boy, you’re safe again in Germany? Thank God! Where are you? When are you coming home? Should we come up to Berlin?”
The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, 1919
“No, no, Papa, I’m still in the army. I have to be processed, and there’s a big welcoming ceremony for General von Vorbeck, a parade up Unter der Linden and through the Brandenburg Gate. All of us from East Africa will participate … but is Katherina there?”
“Yes, yes, here she is.” Katherina rushed down the front stairs, almost tripping on the last step, and ran into the parlor. Otto held out the telephone earpiece to the full extent of the black cord. She took it and moved her lips to almost touch the wooden boxed telephone speaker on the wall. “Levi, darling, is it really you at last? I’ve missed you so, darling … Yes, yes, I love you too … I’m so sorry; I can’t stop crying. Oh, darling, I’ve waited so long for you, to hear your voice, to be sure of your safe return. What? Yes, I understand … How soon, my darling? Several days then … Yes, I understand.”
The operator interrupted the conversation: “Your time is up. Each soldier gets three minutes. You have fifteen seconds.”
“My dearest Kathi, I love you so … I’ll call again and let you know when the troop train leaves Berlin. Yes, yes, me too. Auf wiedersehen, my love.”
Everyone had tears streaming down his or her face and was hugging each other. “Why is everybody crying?” pouted Rebecca, who commenced to sniffle.
Freidl, wiping tears with a soggy handkerchief, said, “We have to call Ilsa and her husband; she’ll be thrilled to hear her brother is coming home soon. And Katherina’s parents, the Obermaiers. I’m sure Levi will call them, of course, but we must call too … and Frau Mathais and Anji. Oh, we have to get the house ready—and my baking … Isn’t it wonderful, Papa? Levi’s coming home at last.”
CHAPTER 2
Soldiers All and Fighting Too
The troop train finally pulled out of the snowbound Berlin station near the end of February, 1919 crammed with soldiers, sailors, sea marines, and assorted other men, mostly from Germany’s African colonies. Most were able bodied, but some were still on stretchers and others, sadly, missing limbs. Levi thought the saddest of all were the blind and the ones with terribly disfiguring face wounds.
“God, I’m lucky,” he mumbled to himself as he shifted his thin frame on the wooden railcar bench.
“There you are, Captain Levi. We’ve got a compartment. Come on, before it fills up.” It was Captain Kohl, who fought in German Cameroon. He reached up and got Levi’s carrying bag down from the net shelf.
“And we’ve got schnapps to smooth the rails!” Both men smiled broadly.
As Levi and Captain Kohl settled into the soft, cushioned seating in the eight-man compartment, someone exclaimed, “We seem to be slowing down!” Several soldiers looked out the window as the southern suburbs of Berlin slipped by. With a screech of steel brakes on steel rails, the train came to a jerking stop.
“Now what?” someone said. Moments later, the conductor came hurrying down the narrow passage. Levi slid open the windowed compartment door and took the train man’s arm. “Why are we stopping?”
“It’s the Communists and the Socialists and the Monarchists, all fighting it out right across our tracks! Can’t you hear the gun fire?” He pulled away and hurried on.
“What? Who’s fighting?” He turned back to see several men hanging out the window and looking toward the engine. “Did you hear that … what the conductor said?”
“Ja, well, they don’t like the present government. All those soldiers of different stripes, that is, with different ideas of what the government should be. They seem to all be against the Weimar Republic.”
Captain Kohl looked at Levi, smiled, and said, “You really are out of it, aren’t you? At least I got to read British newspapers while in the prisoner of war camp in Cameroon.” He shook his head in exasperation and looked at his companion.
Kohl explained, “It‘s like this. The Monarchists want the Kaiser’s son, August Wilhelm, to assume the throne, to be king of Germany. The Communists, that is, the Spartacus Bolsheviks, want a revolution like the Russian Revolution, where they killed the Tsar and his whole rojal family. The Socialists want a strong Labor government, where they control big industry. Now the Weimar government is just trying to create a working, duly elected democratic state. But it seems these other groups don’t want to cooperate with Weimar, so we’ve got all these veterans fighting in the streets.”
Levi slumped into the cushions and stared at the floor. “More fighting? I’ve just spent four and a half years fighting in Africa. Now I come home to find fighting in the streets? Damn! Will it never end?”
The train did move on eventually, and the sounds of civil unrest moved on with it. The schnapps helped Levi slip into a dreamless sleep as rousing army drinking songs rolled down the aisles of the train.
Beer and liquor were easy to come by for these men, thrown together in a bond of comradeship by the war. They, who s
aw slaughter and mayhem for four long years, we’re the lucky ones, still in one piece—or almost so. They were heading home, most to an unknown future.
None of these soldiers were the same men who had left their civilian lives in what seemed a lifetime ago. Fear, pain, and deprivation had altered them and had altered the people they left behind: wives, lovers, mothers, fathers—all were affected by the Great War, as it was now being called.
The troop train stopped north of Munich in the town of Nuremberg. Levi had just enough time to jump off and hurry to the line forming at the telephone booth.
“Kathi, my love, it’s me. I’m in Nuremberg. We stopped to let off some of the men. You have no idea what it means to me to be back in Germany, to see the landscape and the towns … But there is so much fighting up in Berlin … You can‘t imagine what’s going on up there.”
“Yes, yes, my darling, it’s like that here in Munich. Will you be on the next scheduled train from Nuremberg, or—”
“No. They’re letting the troop train go straight on through.”
“Levi, darling, be careful in Munich, at the station, when you transfer. They’re fighting here in Munich too. The Soldiers and Workers Council is trying to set up a Communist government in Bavaria, but it’s quiet in the village, thank God. We’ll meet you at the train station in Munich.”
“No, my love, it will be too dangerous. I’ll go straight through and see you at the village depot … in a few hours, my love.”
And so, after four and a half years apart, Levi and Katherina were in each other’s arms at last. Of course, everyone was at the village train station. They hugged and kissed and laughed and cried and touched him to believe their eyes.
Otto drove the seven-year-old Benz through the snow, and Willie, the farm hand, brought the one-horse carriage to accommodate the rest of the family.
As they passed familiar landmarks, Levi heard the “clink, clink” he knew from his earliest childhood. The blacksmith’s shop and stables were lit with several bare bulbs and from the glow of the coal forge fire. Two men were busy shoeing a farm horse. The sweet smell of coal smoke was like a warm greeting to him. The two vehicles passed the last of the village houses and entered the darkly forested lane to Kalvarianhof.
The Storm That Shook the World Page 31
