November 1918 – and German plenipotentiaries make their way across the country and into enemy territory to sign the Armistice to end the First World War. Their destination is a railway siding in the bleak forest in Compiègne, north east of Paris. They are minor officials, headed by politician Matthias Erzberger, little more than scapegoats for the dishonourable task of surrender.
Mixing fiction with real life events and characters along with speculation and a smattering of rumour and hearsay, Keneally explores the immediacy of the mission. Awaiting the Germans are the two signatories, the Supreme Allied Commander and French representative, Marshall Ferdinand Foch and, for the British, First Sea Lord, Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss, along with several members of their staff. Foch, with his long-held anonymosity, is determined to eke out maximum suffering for the Germans, military and civilian alike.
Threatened by famine and anarchy at home along with the perceived threat of the Soviets from the east, Erzberger has been given carte blanche to sign for peace. But the punitive demands on Germany through the proposed continued blockade of ports and huge tonnage reparations of rolling train stock, trucks, tanks and armaments strike fear in his heart. His country will starve. And Foch has made it clear that there are to be no reductions, no negotiations.
On a continent exhausted by four years of slaughter, Compiègne is the location of the final hours. Foch has set 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month for the Armistice to become official and announce the ceasefire. It’s for Erzbeger to make this happen – just a few days after the German delegation first arrived.
Accessible in its telling, Keneally produces a vivid and claustrophobic telling of those final hours of the Great War as men with their own prejudices, wants, demands are confronted by the sheer magnitude of their task. But it is also impossible to read Gossip From the Forest without being aware of the repercussions of the negotiations.
Gossip From the Forest was shortlisted for the 1975 Booker Prize (one of only two) but lost out to Ruth Prawar Jhabvala and Heat & Dust.
An Opinion or Two 