The Historian

I was very saddened to learn that Robert Caldwell died last week.  He was a great historian and a good friend.  I assume that most of you are familiar with his work, not because he was a celebrity but because you’re reading a historian’s blog.  He was probably the foremost popular historian of our time.  I say “popular historian” because Robert wrote for the general public.  His descriptions of the actions and emotions of historical figures captured the imagination of his readers and made history come alive.  Some academic historians disapproved of this approach, maintaining that unless you could cite an unimpeachable source for every thought, word, and deed you described it had no right to be in a history book.  “History is not speculation” was their motto.  They sold hundreds of books.  Robert sold millions.  Now that he is no longer with us, I can reveal how he gained such a keen insight into historical figures.  Or at least, how he thought he gained insight.

I first met Robert when I was studying journalism at his alma mater.  We had to interview a graduate of the school, with the best interview to be published in the alumni magazine.  Robert was already a famous author and I had no real expectation that he would consent to an interview when I contacted his publisher, but to my surprise he readily agreed to a remote video interview.  I got on his calendar for a 20 minute interview and prepared my questions.  We talked for over two and a half hours.  He was very open, personable, and honest.  His love of history came through loud and clear.  He wasn’t just interested in the specific historical events he’d written about, I found him to be knowledgeable of and fascinated by all historical eras and individuals.  He told incredible stories, not just about key figures in history, but about the lives, loves, and fears of the masses of ordinary people whose lives were impacted by these key figures.  At the end of the interview I had enough material to write ten articles.  I also had decided to change my major to history.

Much to my surprise, Robert contacted me a few months after that interview.  He wanted to know how I was doing, and he was delighted when I told him I’d changed my major.  We talked or exchanged notes periodically throughout my college education, and his advice was invaluable when I began researching my first book.  (How the Battle of Pickett’s Mill Doomed the South, published by Hippencourt Press)  He was kind enough to proofread my draft chapters, praising some and bleeding all over others.  He caught several errors that would have been extremely embarrassing and pointed me in the right direction when my research came to an apparent dead end.  He helped me find an agent and a publisher, and he wrote a review that still makes me blush.

We met face to face for the first time when he came to a book signing I hosted in his home state.  His very presence attracted a large number of readers, some of whom brought books for him to sign even though he was not officially a part of that event.  He nodded in agreement as I gave a presentation before signing books, although I did notice that on two occasions he seemed to “zone out,” seemingly staring at something far away.  We had dinner together afterward and then adjourned to the hotel bar for drinks and a long talk.  We mostly talked about books.  I was actively exploring several possibilities for a second book, and he was actively writing his fourteenth.  He seemed to be in excellent spirits and was excited about the book he was writing, but I thought I detected a slight twitch in his left eye and he occasionally lost his train of thought.  We all lose our train of thought occasionally, and since he was still in his mid-50s I took no further notice.

I thanked him for his praise of my book but told him I was disappointed because I didn’t think I succeeded in making the characters come alive the way he did.  He tried to dismiss my concern, but I pressed him on the topic, asking how he managed to breathe life into his history.

“You have to totally immerse yourself in the times and the people you’re writing about,” he replied.  “I read everything I can find about them, even if it doesn't directly relate to the topic of my book.  Diaries, letters, and other first-person writings are invaluable, even if they’re not written by people who appear in your book.  Try to put yourself in the position of the people in your book.  What did they know, what didn’t they know, what did they believe, how would they have felt about the situation they were facing.  Attitudes about how people should behave change over time, but human nature doesn’t.  Things that would frighten us today frightened them then.  Things that would tempt us tempted them.  How they reacted to these feelings would have been influenced by the attitudes of the time, but how they felt would be the same.”  I thought this was very wise advice and I’ve tried to follow it.  It was only much later, long after that meeting, that I thought about the book he’d written about the Egyptian pharaohs, or the book he wrote about Genghis Khan.  Where were the diaries, letters, and first-person writings about those eras?  How did he make those characters come alive?

Our next meeting was about a year later, after he’d had his first heart attack.  After a long hospital stay he was allowed to return to his home, with 24-hour care by registered nurses.  (His wife had tragically died in a car accident a few years previously.)  I decided to make a research trip to an archive in a neighboring state, mostly as an excuse to visit Robert.  He was happy to see me, but he was still very weak.  He’d lost a lot of weight since our last meeting, and he looked frail.  His eye twitch was worse, and his hands trembled on occasion.  He told me he hadn’t been sleeping well.  We talked about books, but he hadn’t worked on his current book since his heart attack.  The conversation lagged, and in an effort to find something to talk about I asked him how he had researched the life of the Egyptians in his earlier book.

To my surprise, his initial reaction was to stare at me.  Actually, it was more like he was staring at something far beyond me.  He seemed to be deciding what to say.  Finally he spoke.

“I wasn’t entirely honest with you the last time we spoke.  I do rely on diaries, letters, and other written records, but there’s more to it than that.  I must ask, however, that you do not tell anyone else what I’m about to tell you.”

“You have my word,” I replied, somewhat taken aback by his request.

“I learn a lot through dreams,” he replied.  “They’re not really dreams, but they’re not exactly nightmares either.  I experience the memories of people who died long ago.”

He paused and looked at me to gauge my reaction.  I was stunned and found it hard to believe he was actually telling me such a wild tale, but I had too much respect for him to reject it outright.  I guess he interpreted my silence as a guarded acceptance.

“It didn’t begin until I was researching my fourth book.  The book was about the first day of the Battle of the Somme, and I had been reading as many letters and diaries as I could find that were written by the British soldiers who attacked on that fateful day.  One night I dreamt that a young British infantryman in full battle gear approached me.  He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old.  I asked him his name, but he just stared at me with pleading eyes.  It was as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t.  He reached out and touched my arm.  Suddenly my mind swirled with dozens of experiences.  They weren’t just visions, they were experiences.  I was on a long training march in England.  Rifle practice with a Lee-Enfield.  Carrying wire and digging saps to prepare for the attack.  Crouching in fear, waiting for the moment when the lieutenant would blow his whistle and we would clamber out of our trench and run through the torn-up fields that separated our trench from the German front lines.  I was so weighted down with combat gear that I could barely manage a fast walk.  I could see the German lines.  I was desperately looking for a gap in the barbed wire when I heard a machine gun open up.  Suddenly I collapsed in a heap with a terrible pain in my abdomen . . .”

He had become agitated as he said this.  He stopped to catch his breath and slumped back in his chair.  “Then I was myself again.  The soldier had withdrawn his hand.  He was still looking at me with pleading eyes as he faded away.  I woke up and tried to tell myself it was just a dream, brought on by hours of reading about the experiences of the soldiers who fought that battle.  But it seemed too real to be a dream.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that the soldier wanted me to experience what he had experienced.  That he thought his death would somehow have meaning if it wasn’t forgotten, if someone knew how he lived and how he had died.”

Robert sat quietly for a long time after he finished describing his dream.  He appeared to be deep in thought.  Then he spoke again.

“It was several months before I had another experience like that.  This time it was an artilleryman who was gassed by German counter-battery fire.  Later I was approached by a German soldier who endured several days and sleepless nights, huddled in an underground dugout while British shells pounded the earth above him.  As each shell burst he expected the roof to collapse and bury him alive.  He finally went mad and ran out of the dugout to escape what he felt was certain death, only to be blown to pieces by the next shell.  Those dreams helped me write better books.  I experienced feelings, noted details of people and equipment, and gained an understanding of events that I never could have gained from written records, but they were hell on me.  I was afraid to fall asleep at night.  I experienced flashbacks.  I’d read enough about combat to know that I was experiencing PTSD, but they weren’t my traumatic experiences.  I was experiencing other people’s trauma.”

“For many years I only had these experiences when I was deeply engrossed in researching a book, and they were related to the book I was working on.  Each time I finished a book I swore I’d never write another one, but after a while my resolve would crumble.  I felt compelled to tell the stories of the phantoms who haunted my sleep.  It was as though even when they weren’t sharing their memories, they were urging me on.  Hoping to live again, if only for a brief time, and only through my writing.”

“The men and women who approached me were never famous.  Never the generals who commanded the battles, or the kings and lords who ruled the masses.  They weren’t forgotten.  Their stories were well known.  I was approached by the nameless masses who carried out their orders, and who died as nameless victims of battles, diseases, starvation, or similar horrors.  As the years went by I began to be approached by more of these phantoms.  As if the word was spreading.  They were no longer related to books I was writing, or even if I was writing.  I’ve died in concentration camps.  I’ve been chained to the oars of a Roman galley that was rammed by another warship.  I’ve gasped my last breath in a sunken submarine . . .”

His story was interrupted by the entrance of a nurse, who told him it was time for his medications and who invited me to stay for lunch.  We talked of other things over lunch.  He seemed embarrassed to have told me so much already, and I wasn’t about to broach the subject.  He obviously wasn’t well, and I wanted him to rest and get better.  I did not want to cause him to relive more horrifying memories.  I understood why his hands trembled, his eye twitched, and he sometimes stared off into the distance.

Robert and I kept in touch, and I visited him a few more times in the months that remained to him.  He stopped writing, and he seemed more at peace.  He only mentioned his dreams once, and then only indirectly.  A few weeks before his fatal heart attack he called me out of the blue.  After some idle chit-chat he got to the reason for his call.

“I’ve been thinking about that promise I insisted you give me,” he said, “and I realized I wasn’t being fair.  You’re a historian and my dreams, however bizarre, are part of history.  I can’t expect you to keep quiet about them forever.  All I ask is that you don’t mention them until after I’m gone.  Critics think much of my writing is speculation already, and if you tell them about my crazy experiences they’ll write me off completely.  Once I join the people I wrote about, well, I don’t suppose I’ll care anymore.”

That was the last time I talked to Robert.  I’m glad he referred to his experiences as dreams, as I’m convinced that’s all they were.  I never was able to believe that the spirits of the dead were appearing to him in his sleep.  His mind was just compiling the results of his tireless research into imagined memories.  The details and experiences he thought he gained through the dreams were actually things he had read.  They were just buried in his phenomenal memory until his subconscious brought them to life in a dream.

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I wrote that blog entry shortly after Robert’s death.  A cocksure youth, I was convinced I knew all about history, subconscious memories, and imagined memories.  My own dreams didn’t begin until I was working on my fourth book.  A young, American soldier with a shattered arm and pleading eyes approached me.  He didn’t say a word, but I immediately thought “Da Nang. . .”