Pro Patria Mori

By Elizabeth Cowley Tyler

PRO PATRIA MORI is a story of friendship, rupture and healing. It deals with the fate of three friends: Trevor Howe, from London and
Cornwall; Ernst Steiner, from Lubeck, Germany; and Etienne Bonnard, from Fontainebleau, France, all fellow students at Morton College, Oxford,
in 1914, just before the outbreak of the Great War. Each enlists to fight for his country and suffers the physical and spiritual consequences of a war which ushers in a new kind of mechanized slaughter.

The novel explores the consequences of various types of death for one´s country and ends as the world is about to come apart with the outbreak of World War II.

The book opens in November, 1938, with Trevor
Howe in the midst of a recurring dream about
the war wound to his left hand. He has received
a letter from Kristina Steiner, the sister of his best friend from Oxford. She tells him that there is to be a memorial service for her brother at Morton College, Oxford, and that she hopes he will attend. Trevor is grieved and relieved to finally learn the fate of his childhood friend -- that he was killed in 1914 at the first battle of Ypres.

The novel continues with the paralell stories of Trevor Howe and Kristina Steiner as they try to reconnect. Due to her Jewish grandparents, Kristina is unable to get out of Germany after Krystalnacht to attend the ceremony for Ernst at Oxford. Her fate becomes progressively more entwined with that of Herr Commandant Karl Hauptmann, a Nazi officer who has been assigned by the party to watch over her.

The central problem of the protagonist, Trevor
Howe is to come to terms with the wounds of his past, both psychological and physical, and to reconnect with his ability to love and create.
He does this by trying to reconnect with Kristina Steiner, by reencountering another old friend, Etinne Bonnard, who had dealt with his wound by using his art, and by reinvolving himself with Bonnard´s sister, Genevieve.
The novel explores the various types of death for one´s country -- the physical death of Ernst Steiner, the death of the soul and creative spirit of Trevor Howe and Etienne Bonnard´s loss of a youthful and vibrant personality. Bonnard helps Trevor reconnect with his creativity and to write the memoir that liberates the artist in him, and Trevor helps Bonnard recapture some of his youthful joie de vivre, while Kristina Steiner suffers a more sinster fate. The book ends as the world is about to come apart again
with the outbreak of World War II.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 15, 2009
• ISBN: 9781450006316

Elizabeth Cowley Tyler

Elizabeth Cowley Tyler lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Elmira College and a Master of Arts in French from Middlebury College. She has lived and studied in London and Paris and has traveled extensively in France, Italy, England, Germany, and Russia. Prior published works includes a series of mystery novels: The Madeleine Murders, Murder at the Maison de Balzac, and Murder at Les Halles, featuring Inspector Henri Corbet of the Paris Police. Her literary novels include Pro Patri Mori, a Great War novel, Dark Angel, In Search of Chopin, a biographical novel. Hôtel Chopin, Tavistock Square, Vanishing Point, Italian Hours and Violet Hours are her most recent works.

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Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Cowley Tyler.

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Rev. date: 12/05/2019

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CONTENTS

PART I

Cornwall, England: 1 November 1938

Oxford, England: 9 November 1938

PART II

Lübeck, Germany: 22 October 1938

Travemünde and Lübeck, Germany: 8 November 1938

Lübeck, Germany: 9 November 1938

Lübeck, Germany: 10 November 1938

Oxford, England: 11 November 1938

London, England: 13 November 1938

Rules Restaurant, London: 15 November 1938

Lübeck, Germany: 15 November 1938

PART III

Fontainebleau, France: 20 November 1938

Dover, England: 30 November 1938

Lübeck, Germany: 30 November 1938

Lübeck, Germany: 1 December 1938

Fontainebleau, France: 1 December 1938

Fontainebleau, France: 15 December 1938

Fontainebleau, France: 20 December 1938

Lübeck, Germany: 21 December 1938

Fontainebleau, France: 23 December 1938

Lübeck, Germany: 24-25 December 1938

Fontainebleau, France: 31 December 1938

Lübeck, Germany: 31 December 1938

PART IV

Paris, France: 15 January 1939

Fontainebleau, France: 1 March 1939

Paris, France: 15 March 1939

A Train in Belgium: 15 April 1939

A train in Belgium: 15 April 1939

Ypres, Belgium: 15 April 1939

Acknowledgements

For the youth of Europe who fought, were wounded or perished in the Great War, the political and cultural nightmare that Henry James described as the plunge of civilization into the abyss of blood and darkness.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum Est

PART I

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I

am trying to awake.

James Joyce

Ulysses

CORNWALL, ENGLAND

1 November 1938

Trevor Howe’s shriveled left hand was a most reliable predictor of bad weather. The large bay window of the library protected him now from the storm dashing at the rocks and beach below, but maybe later he would don his rain gear, walk on the beach, watch the battle between the sea and the land.

The paper, sir, and the post. Hartman appeared in the doorway.

Thank you, Hartman. Trevor took the bundles.

More coffee, sir?

No, Hartman, I’ve had enough. Hartman retired and left Trevor sitting in a chair before the fire.

The papers were full of Munich. Chamberlain had returned claiming that they had curtailed Hitler, that there would be peace. But, as surely as his withered claw could predict a storm, Trevor knew that war would come again.

He rose from his chair, went to the window again to study the raging surge below. The unopened letter, clutched in his good hand, was post-marked Lübeck, Germany. He didn’t recognize the handwriting, yet it bore a strange resemblance to Ernst’s. Then, grasping the letter in his left claw, with a trembling right hand, he opened the envelope.

Lübeck, Germany

25 October 1938

Dear Trevor,

I hope this letter finds you. My family has been in exile of sorts from the business world in Lübeck. I would have written to you before, but after Ernst was killed in 1914 at Ypres, Father never recovered from the loss. He shut the business down, and we retreated to our house in the country.

I write you now because Father is dead, and I am coming out of hiding to attend a ceremony at Morton. They will place a plaque in the chapel to commemorate Ernst’s life and death. I would like you to attend and hope to see you there. It will take place on November 11th at the Morton College chapel in Oxford at two in the afternoon.

Yours very sincerely,

Kristina Steiner

Trevor read the letter again and again, then turned away from the window. He looked about the warm, close room with the fire muttering in the grate, the rows of books bathed in soft light. The library was familiar, home, and he was glad he hadn’t sold the house when his father died. The warmth of the fire caressed his hands, for a moment convincing him that both were strong and healthy.

Until now, Trevor had no idea what had happened to Ernst. He had spent his time in France looking for him in every skirmish and battle, dreading yet hoping to find him. Not finding him meant he could be alive somewhere and maybe one day he would see him again. Some of Trevor’s letters to Lübeck had come back addressee unknown, but there were many he never saw again. It seemed as though the whole family had never existed, and he couldn’t bring himself to visit to see what had happened to Steiner & Steiner, importers of fine Bordeaux wine.

Hartman, at Trevor’s request, had arranged all of the books alphabetically by author. It was in the M section that Trevor found a very old German edition of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. He took the book from the shelf, caressed the soft leather cover, then let the pages fall open to a passage about two-thirds of the way into the large volume. Various words were underlined with their English equivalents written in the margins beside them. Trevor’s German in those years was excellent, but there were still words he didn’t know well enough, and, thus, he would underline them and look up their exact meanings in his German/English dictionary.

Howe, would you please read and translate the next two sentences. Fellow Barrett frowned his way.

"Herr Wenzel war, wie sich versteht, am Morgen des 7. Juli der erste Gratulant

"Mr. Wenzel was the first person to offer his congratulations on the morning of July 7.

"‘Ja, Herr Senator, hundret Jahre!’ sagte er und liess Messer und Streichriemen behende in seinen roten Handen spielen . . ."

‘Yes, Senator Buddenbrook, one hundred years,’ he said, balancing the razor in his red hands and deftly stropping it.

Trevor looked up to see the rest of the students in his tutorial admiring his performance.

Well done, Howe, well done.

A hundred years of the Buddenbrooks family firm. A call for celebration. A hundred years of Trevor’s father’s firm of Howe & Lund, importers and exporters of fine wine, London, Cornwall. A hundred years of doing business with Steiner & Steiner, importers and exporters of fine wine, Lübeck, Germany. But there was no one left to celebrate it. Howe & Lund had been dissolved upon his father’s death, and now Trevor lived like a profligate on the proceeds of the sale.

Unlike Thomas Buddenbrook, he did not wish to carry on the family business. It might have been more difficult to avoid doing so had it not been for the war that began in August of 1914 as a conflict everyone thought would be over by Christmas.

A sharp pain in his left claw made Trevor aware of the volume in his hands. Thomas Mann certainly didn’t escape into writing detective fiction as Trevor had done since the end of the Great War. He clutched the volume tightly, released it, then gently closed it. When he put it on the table, the movement shut out the pain in his left hand.

Ernst is dead! How he longed to go back to that time of not knowing. The darkness that descended was palpable, and Trevor feared being smothered by it. The letter fell from his hand, and suddenly he felt very, very cold. He leaned into the fire to warm his hands, but his whole body needed warming. For a moment, he considered running a bath, but maybe now a walk would warm him up and help him sort things out. He donned his foul weather gear and headed for the beach.

He walked along the edge of the water, letting the mist of the downpour wet his rain gear and the waves crash over his knee-high boots, not minding when some of it sprayed up to wet his trousers. For a moment, he considered running headlong into the surf, trying to swim or maybe even allowing himself to sink to the bottom. He shivered and continued to walk, braced by the strong scent of the salt air.

Then it was the summer of 1910 when he and Ernst were about fifteen years old. The place, Travemünde, the Steiner country home, the time, during one of Trevor’s summer visits. He remembered how serious Ernst was about practicing his English and how he had insisted (more than Trevor liked, really) on speaking English. Trevor would accommodate him because he always did, but he would make every effort to practice his German. Ernst was quite the task master on Trevor’s grammar, more harsh surely than Trevor on his, even though Ernst had urged him to be as tough as possible. Ernst was fond of reminding Trevor at every turn that he wanted to study in England, and if he were going to do that, he would have to have an excellent command of the language, to say nothing of what he would need to get into Oxford.

The late afternoon sun was low in the sky but still provided heat on brown arms, legs and chests as Trevor and Ernst spread the beach blanket on the honey-warm sand next to the blue and white striped beach hut.

Ernst was droning on about how displeased he was with the Sunday afternoon company at the Steiner home when he suddenly changed the subject.

It seems as though you just got here, Trevor. Ernst squinted his blue eyes shut, and shaded them with the visor he had made of his right hand.

I know. Trevor pointed his chin up towards the sky and kept his eyes closed while the dark red heat of the sun branded his eyelids.

Ernst turned over on his side and stared intently at Trevor who didn’t see his gaze but rather felt it burning through his skin. You will be my friend forever? He posed the question with a lilt on the final word.

Of course I will. Trevor braved the red-yellow glare and squinted his eyes half open. Why do you ask? His eyelids closed again over sparkling pins of light.

I need to know.

Trevor’s searing skin told him Ernst continued to stare at him. As much of forever as anyone can see or know now, he said, paying homage to the rational skeptic that was alive in him even then.

I mean always. No conditions, no exceptions. Ernst’s voice quavered.

Trevor tried to bring him back to the present, away from the unknowable. Ernst, you’re my best friend.

I know, Ernst said. Trevor braved the glare, opened his eyes, saw Ernst roll over on his back and then stand up.

I dare you! Ernst shouted. He had removed his bathing suit and stood exquisitely nude before Trevor whose sun-baked eyes traveled up the length of his long, brown legs, took in the curve of his strong buttocks and made its way up to his face with the mole almost like a beauty mark on the left side of his mouth. Ernst’s eyes were aglow with the challenge, and with a toss of his honey-brown curls, he began to run towards the water.

Wait! Trevor tore off his suit and ran after him. Ernst was his first love, and after this conversation on the beach, he knew that Ernst not only knew it but wanted more tangible proof, more promise of a future than Trevor felt able to give even though he did love him for his intensity, for his single-mindedness when setting about a task, for his penetrating intelligence, and, yes, for his stunning physical beauty.

Even in the mist, downpour and crash of the silver waves, Trevor could still see Ernst’s lovely backside as he ran nude into the ocean, waving his arm and daring him to follow. It was the image Trevor carried with him when he wondered what had happened to his dear, old friend, when he felt like an amputee, knowing that his limb was gone but still feeling its presence. Trevor stood motionless, letting the waves crash around him, Ernst’s image blurred by his tears.

The clock in the library told Trevor it had only been an hour and ten minutes since he had left for his trudge on the beach. His bathroom—oak floors and white wainscoting, large porcelain tub, and a window overlooking the ocean—was one of his favorite rooms in the house. The water temperature had to be regulated so it was not too hot or too cold, but today he wouldn’t trouble Hartman about drawing his bath. Trevor turned the spigots to regulate the water temperature.

As he undressed, Trevor noticed his body in the free-standing, full-length mirror that used to be in his mother’s room. If he looked from his right side, he couldn’t see his shriveled claw. How would Ernst see him now? He didn’t think the claw would bother him at all. Trevor was still quite slim in spite of a bit of middle-aged fullness in the waist, and his muscle tone was good because he walked everywhere and often.

He had not given up sex in any decisive, concerted way, but rather because without love or caring, it was too empty. Withered claw notwithstanding, right after the war, Trevor had used sex