The Listening Tube Welcomes Gerald Everett Jones

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Hey, the listening to welcome to the guest.

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I'm bubble would be from the listening tube. My guest today is author Gerald Everett Jones. He's written a lot of books, but his most recent one is based on another book, one written by a soldier in World War I and discovered in a thrift show. The soldier's journal sheds the light on a war that was perhaps the most brutal of the 20th century. Gerald's research reveals the motivations and origins of the Great War and how it relates to the geopolitics of today. Gerald Everett Jones spent some time in the listening tube from his home in Santa Monica, California. Gerald, you and I are going to talk a lot about war today, both old ones and new ones. Let's go in chronological order. Your latest work, Jonathan's Journal, is an historical novel about a man who discovers a diary written by a soldier from World War I. An intriguing premise, to be sure, but in your summary of the book on the website, on your website, you end by saying, history is never settled. It waits for someone brave enough to read between the lines. I loved reading that, and I could not help but wonder: did you discover anything between the lines when you were doing the research for this novel?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Oh, yes. And that was actually the engine of drama, if you will. The the way the plot unfolded had a lot to do with the diary that I found was among my mother's collectibles. And it was something she bought at the uh flea market in London because I think she thought it looked good on the shelf. It had a red leather spine, gold leather, gold lettering. And uh it was all in elegant uh India ink calligraphy. It was hard to read, but it was a soldier's uh diary from uh the the date on it was 1919, and the fellow was anonymous, and he was a British soldier, soldier from Exeter who'd been sent to Mesopotamia in India. The title of the diary was Memoirs of My Travels East. And I thought to myself, and I was read I was reading this diary after she passed, so I couldn't, I don't, I'm certain at this point it wasn't a family member because I really researched into who this fellow might have been. And one of the things that really got to me, and you know, I thought about just simply publishing it with not as nonfiction with annotations, or you know, because that might be interesting. But then as I got into it, I began to realize this fellow's diary was more like a report from the field, it was more like a series of postcards. I went here, I went there, I got sick here. We we slogged through mud there, we had terrible food here, we had a feast there, you know, and and also the idea this was this was fighting in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. I thought, well, we we weren't never taught any of that in school. And you know, we've seen the movies. Uh uh, and that was one of the things that struck me right away was you know, a young man in Exeter at the outbreak of World War I, there weren't any movies back then about what it was like to be in in the middle of trench warfare. Then the the accounts in the newspapers would all would be like baseball scores. We lost this many, they lost that many, we took this city, they took that city. Well, and then the idea of of you know being tricked out in just an elegant red dress uniform and going to math, you know, to balls and and and and having a life of an officer or whatever, but the only way you were going to get the real story would be, you know, if you happen to be in the local pub and you the guy sitting next to you lost an arm. Well, he's probably not gonna talk about it. So the thing that began to occur to me was, you know, there has to be a story between the lines here. This fellow, did he leave anybody behind? He rarely spoke. There was one time, I think, in the diary where he said he he um he skinned a snake and sent the snakeskin home. Okay. But I mean, the idea of, you know, you would think he would be talking about writing to a wife or a sweetheart or brother or whatever, and there was just very little mention of that. And so I thought, well, you know something? I bet you anything there's a novel between the lines. Why don't I just imagine? Because, for example, evidently he had won a riflery, some kind of riflery contest when he was a teenager. His talent for what he called musketry was evidently at the expert level. Well, I had to research musketry and found out that goes all the way back to shot and shell and loading one shot at a time. Musketry is all about training the squad how to load and fire in coordination so that you can take out the enemy strategically. Well, in World War I, it was about charge, you know, charging the machine gun nest and encircling the enemy or or when to retreat, whatever. Where how where and how to store ammunition so that you could reload? Well, he got sent from Iraq to India, where there was no fighting. It was like, well, why did he get sent there? This is still the war. Well, it turned out that the Indian regulars that fought in the in Mesopotamia, who were part of the British Army, were all trained and equipped and uniformed in India, and that's where they experienced their musketry training. Well, no sooner does our hero get to India than he comes down with diphtheria, and so it turns out the diphtheria vaccine wasn't invented till after he'd written this diary. So the soldiers were injected with horse serum from horses that had recovered from diphtheria, and the hypodermic needle looked like a bicycle pump.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Oh my.

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And I and I thought to myself, okay, well, uh, you know, this story's gotta have some, it's gotta have an engine. There has to be a heart to this story. There has to be something besides just we we have we went here, we went there, we were victorious here, we were victorious there. What what's going through his emotional life? And then I just began, what would be more natural than he then he um falls in love with his nurse in India? Okay, well, and the and the other thing is I had to have I had to have a researcher in the present like me who could discover these things. And I thought, okay, well, I know art history pretty well. Why don't I have him be a professor of art history at UCLA and have him live in Santa Monica? And his his aged mother is living with him during the pandemic, and they're they're having uh they're at each other's throats. Uh that'll give me some interest. But then then I then I had him break out of there and go to the library because you know he needs to research all these things that you know I had a small army of interns, research interns, God bless them. But I mean, you know, I have him going to the reference desk at Santa Monica Library, and of course, the librarian happens to be Russian Ukrainian, having uh served in the diplomatic corps in Kiev right before uh that uh administration changed. So that gave me a very rich mirror in the present so that I could draw some parallels with some of the things that was going on in Ukraine at the time. Yes, that's that was the heart of the matter. There's a lot of uh the presence of the British Empire, and actually, it was the other thing that really struck me, and you know, you said we won we wanted to explore the topic of war a bit, is that the Mesopotamia and India stories did let me know that the people at the time really had very little appreciation of why that war began. And it had all to do, which I was never taught, that it had all to do with Germany wanting to build a railroad between Berlin and Baghdad. And that was going to ultimately hook up the port of Hamburg, uh in the north, with the port of Basra, in which is at the tip of present-day Iraq, and that would that would have bypassed the Suez Canal.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

I think most people are taught that the reason World War I started was because the leader of Romania and his wife had been assassinated.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian student, and Serbia really was part of or would have been part of Austria-Hungary at that point. The Serbian student simply wanted, presumably, simply wanted independence for Serbia. Well, the German, the Berlin to Baghdad railroad would have gone right through Serbia. So I mean, again, that the motivation other than Serbian independence, that's about all we were taught. The other thing that we were taught about it was beside that inciting incident, the the royal families of Europe had what were called interlocking directories. They had tricky treaties signed with each other, you know, NATO, SETO, you know, uh, and it's like, okay, if you get attacked, I'll I've got your back, kind of thing. And so it was it was definitely a set of dominoes that that just caused the situation to expand. But when you think about it, the idea that the British Admiralty realized that the Germans were going to bypass the Suez Canal, which the British and the French basically managed together because the French had run out of uh de les started the Suez Canal in 1879, but the Franco-Prussian war uh had caused the France in defending itself to basically run out of money. So they didn't have the money to finish the Suez Canal, and dear Benjamin Disraeli borrowed five million dollars from the Bank of England to bail out the French, and so the British and the French had the Suez Canal, and that since the British had that presence in India since Queen Elizabeth's time, 1640, the idea of their access to India and China being threatened by ultimately by the Germans had them terrified, um, if you will. And certainly Germany had built these things called submarines at that time. And the odd thing is that the British Navy, when they had conferences among themselves, and other research discloses, some of the uh Admiralty wondered, uh, well, should we be building submarines? At that point, they hadn't built any. And it's like, should in response, should we should we build submarines? And the the opinion of the Admiralty right up until the beginning of the war was that submarine was a defensive weapon and a coward's alternative.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Now, was there any indication that uh the the man who wrote the journal uh on which the ba the book is based, that your mother bought, uh, did did he know why World War I started? Did he know what he was fighting for?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

He did not mention it explicitly. He actually, in the very beginning of the diary, he says he was inspired to join the military early in the war because he was he was thrilled at uh during a parade when he was watching all the red uniforms go by. And it turns out by the end of the diary, you realize that he was actually married at the time. And he was he was uh away from home for about three years. So that's significant. And the other thing that's really I would say curious about him is that he was sent from Exeter uh after he had served he had served in the cavalry on the co on the southern coast because uh Britain feared uh uh a war that would involve cavalry on their own soil with a uh an invasion from the from the sea and the the cavalry patrolled the beaches. Well, nothing really much happened in that way, and soon as the trench warfare in France heated up, the cavalry was all drafted into the infantry in Europe, and he he ended up going into early in the war, he ended up going to France, and the thing was that the diary says that he was injured. Didn't say he was wounded, said he was injured early in the war and sent back. So he was sent back to Exeter where he recovered, and at that point, if it had been a wound, he probably would have been excused from further military service. Injury, who knows? Slipped off a barstool. Uh, but he re-he re-enlisted, and he re-enlisted because he knew he was going to be sent to Mesopotamia. And he his and in the diary, he explains I had had this long desire to see foreign lands. So he kind of thought, you know, as my my father who fought in the Pacific, he said, you know, his war was two years of boredom and half an hour of pure abject terror. So I I think this fellow might have felt that he wasn't going to see a whole lot of action. Uh, but of course he did. And the other thing, as far as being aware, and I would say this going back to the newspaper accounts of the time, and this is one of the things the research disclosed, even though the the baseball score type reporting of the battles was what people got in the newspapers, in terms of the editorial content and the reporting of debates in parliament, the British and and also British investors were very, very aware at the time of something called the Eastern Question. And there was an awareness among all of the European powers and also of the uh Arabic powers in the Middle East of the fact that the Turkish Empire was tanking, it was losing its authority, it was losing its control of the tribes it administered in its far-flung empire, and it was running out of money, and it was basically on the brink of collapse, which was the main reason that they allied with the Germans. And most of the Mesopotamian campaign, which the British fought to keep that railroad from progressing, which it didn't, they was British against the Turks. The British had controlled the southern Iraq, and the the the train was headed toward them, and it was mostly Turkish soldiers that they were fighting. So the eastern question was when the Turks go down, who's going to dominate that territory? Especially the Black Sea. One of the things I discovered, which again I'm not reading in any daily newspapers, we don't give the get the reasons for war. What is one of the main motivations for Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine is that he's got a nuclear sub-base. One of his two main nuclear sub bases is at the tip of Crimea. Okay, well, when his puppet government was in power in Ukraine, no problem with that lease. But the minute Ukraine joins NATO, it's going to be, hey, you guys, okay, uh, we'll let you in, but you've got to get rid of that sub base. All right, there's another, there's only one other warm water uh subbase, it's in Vladivostok, right near Japan, right? The other end of the empire. So, yes, he could move his sub-base up the coast of the the Black Sea.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Now, Gerald, does Jonathan's journal settle any history? Is there anything you he you were able to wrap up for us?

SPEAKER_00 18:12

I think that the the I mean there's a there have been entire books written about the Berlin to Baghdad Railway. And I'm amazed, frankly, that I've even even during college courses that that uh hinged on geopolitics, there was no mention of this at all. And you know, as well in terms of the geopolitics of what happened in Germany during the 1930s, the Weimar Republic, the Weimar Republic and the fall of that very progressive regime. I mean, uh they the Weimar Republic looked a lot like the the Democrats under Trump won, is that you know they were they were so busy fighting with each other that they couldn't really fend off the the uh you know the far right. And you know, Hitler got in with uh 33 percent of the of the vote. Well, I mean, World War II simply continued the conflict. And one of the things I think that I learned is that uh during World War I, Germany had a naval presence in the Pacific, but not much. They even lost a couple of battles along the coast of uh Chile, I believe. And I think one of the main reasons that Japan came into the war in World War II was they had a powerful naval presence in the Pacific, so that rounded out the global reach of what would have been, you know, the German Empire, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

So I yeah. I think a lot of uh World War II is settled uh simply because the Nazis kept such meticulous records.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Indeed.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

You don't really have to read between the lines to know what happened. Are there a lot of records from World War I Germany?

SPEAKER_00 20:13

The Germans were always good record keepers, and so were the well, the British, the British, you might say the British were better. I'm I I came within a hair's breadth of actually identifying the soldier because we combed through the British military records, and there's there's a museum in Exeter and there's one in Devonshire, and they there's quite a lot of uh war records there, as there is for the United States, actually. And uh a lot of them have been microfilmed, but when I but the diary that I writ uh that I have is actually a numbered volume. Uh it was it was a bookseller's in London that had sold these blank diaries that then the calligrapher used. And it must have been an expensive thing, you know, black, black leather with red leather spine. And it was numbered, and so I emailed the the uh the bookseller, and they said, Well, you know, you've got the number there, and we probably should have been able to answer exactly who bought the book. Now, would it have been the soldier or the calligrapher? I don't know. But they said, We should have been able to tell you, but frankly, our offices in London were destroyed during their V2 bombing. Uh-huh. And I would say that they're you know, you know, I mean German City of Dresden leveled uh almost almost as severely as Hiroshima was, but but non-nuc non-nuclear bombs. So I don't frankly know how much of the German wreck ex exists. But I will say that in terms of scholarship, yes, I mean there there are multiple books written on the Berlin Baghdad Railway, and I I frankly, I and even to the fact that it was Krupp, you know, the arms of Krupp, the uh uh German manufacturer was making. rails uh iron rails for the uh for the railway they were making those in in the 1890s germ germany planned actually from uh the end of the franco-prussian war uh uh 1880 thereabouts uh it was still wilhelm um in a way if wilhelm had pressed the franco-Prussian war further he almost defeated the French he had he had Paris encircled and then he just kind of you could say he ran out of patience but he just basically went home and said you know we'll fight it in the next war and that gave France a chance to recover and and frankly one of the reasons the France recovered so rapidly from the Franco-Prussian war was American investment that was the Gilded Age American money flooded into Europe and I will say also because the British were very wanted to be very protective of their global investment the British Empire which extended all the way from you know Hong Kong all the way over to to uh well you know Australia whatever uh because the the the British Empire was vulnerable at that point I would say the math in terms of American investment was yes there were a lot of there was a lot of American investment in Germany there was a lot of traffic with Germany but in but frankly we had more invested in Britain than we did in Germany so I don't think it was so much a matter of morality as it was again geopolitics and I will say also I mean uh some of my uh forebearers uh were uh second generation German and my my dad who fought in the US Navy against the jap Japanese he entered the war World War II in 1943 uh so it had it it was gone pretty far along at that point but he he said to me once he said well you know your grandmother and she's she was she her her father was German who'd come over and and he said uh your grandmother admired Hitler until they found out about the camps and they hadn't they hadn't found out about the camps until the Russians and the Americans went in to liberate them which was very late in the war. Yes it certainly was it was often said that Germany had been punished too much at the Treaty of Versailles that that's been debated back and forth as to whether that was really a really the cause but I mean Germany did did rearm itself very very rapidly. Now most of today's major military conflicts are conducted by coalitions of countries indeed what we used to call world wars or the Great War and then world war two how can we take what we've learned from the first two world wars and apply it to the Iran war today well the math has changed so much in terms of destructiveness the you know you will you have a you have a school of philosophy over here in the United States that claims that nuclear weapons have quote unquote kept the peace since World War II and from the standpoint of superpowers fighting each other perhaps what is and it's it's been no secret and you know Pentagon papers pretty much bear it out that what nuclear the nuclear equation has caused is a series of proxy wars where you know here we were in Vietnam we were actually fighting the Russians to show them that we that we weren't so out of practice and not willing to serve sacrifice our young men in in a larger war. This was part of what Henry Kissinger just really didn't want to say to anybody but that was basically the the the reason for that war. Ukraine's a proxy war i mean the the main reason that uh nato existed and was formed was to keep the Russian empire from moving eastward yes and we did we did you know and then they formed the Warsaw Pact uh in response and if you read Walter Isaacson's book uh the wise men it really kind of explains how the American diplomatic service really since FDR and Secretary Simpson was constantly practically all of American strategy had to do with trying to prevent World War III as a conflict across that line between the Warsaw Pact and NATO and you could argue that that Vietnam was a proxy war you could also argue that Afghanistan was a proxy war in that uh and the Afghanistan spelled the end of the Soviet Union because the the populace just got sick of of I I don't 400 000 troops lost and uh Russian troops lost yeah they were there in Afghanistan for a very long time. Well right and that was Charlie Wilson's war I mean we did that was a pro we we had proxies our proxy was Osama bin Laden who was our guy I mean it was like uh Saddam Hussein who was our guy Noriega who was our guy and then both of those guys turned against us and we had to pick them up I mean it's it's geopolitics the friend of my the enemy of my enemy is my friend and the Ukrainian war is a proxy war. I mean we we're we're propping up the Europeans so that we don't have to put quote unquote boots on the ground we had uh boots on the ground to some extent in Syria and you could say that that the Russian involvement in Syria had a lot to do with uh access to the Mediterranean Russia covered swarmwater ports it was Gore Vidal who during the Afghan uh during the Russian incursion into Afghanistan uh spoke truth to power and said listen the the reason that we're in Afghanistan is that uh the Russians want to build a pipeline between the Caspian Sea their their oil reserves there and the Indian Ocean so that they can sell oil throughout the uh uh uh Southeast Asia and frankly we would rather control that pipeline and during in in later years when we were involved there and I think it was it was Vidal who had pointed this out um Dick Cheney wanted to use the mother of all bombs the so-called bunker buster bomb uh to drop on the tunnels in in northern Afghanistan near the uh Khyber Pass he wanted to drop those because we we thought uh bin Laden was running between these areas for uh in in hiding and Vidal said you know if you if you connect the dots on the map he's map he says we're simply we're simply doing the excavation for the pipeline now Gerald in regards to the Iran war President Trump said the attack was needed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is there something else between those lines well our support for Israel goes beyond the moral choice and goes beyond even Christian faction evangelist there's a brand new book called New No Prophets which is about the uh the Christian evangelist and and right wing christian faction in the United States which has largely been not explained in in our in our news reporting is the the the allod the allegiances of Mike Johnson and and also Pete Hagsith both from right wing nationalist congregations and movements and and the complicity of other uh of uh of January 6th writers as part of you know part of a larger Christian movement these are people who basically would like to who who may have feel as though the hastening the end of the world would not be necessarily a bad thing perhaps even an obligation and I would say that is a very serious movement and whether that's a third of the American electorate I don't really know but I would say that that's going to be with us for a very long time.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

So it's not like as of yesterday the a the era of uh uh of of Trump may be over in terms of uh but it's it's but the it the era of oligarchs of worldwide oligarchs is certainly not over and um we we can anticipate that dealing with that regardless of where we go uh as an electorate uh over the next couple of decades I would say all right Gerald well I I really do appreciate you having this conversation with me today I have uh thoroughly enjoyed it I hope you have as well Bob you're a very generous host appreciate it to learn more about Gerald Everett Jones' book Jonathan's journal as well as his many other literary works go to his website at geraleverettjones.com I hope you enjoyed hearing my conversation with Gerald as much as I did having it thanks again to Gerald Everett Jones for spending some time with you and me in the listening tube. Follow the listening tube at thelisteningtube where you'll also find not the headlines and this week in history click on the green follow button or donate to the show by clicking on the buy me a coffee button on the homepage. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube I'm your host Bob Woodley for the Mell Ad Infinitum