The Death of Hercules: A DocuNovel

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The opposite of good is not evil. The opposite of good is chaos.

Evil is an organizing force that arranges before it the good scattered about the world. But in chaos even good turns on itself. The time of chaos is usually briefer and more brutal than when either good or evil is ascendant, and a coherent story is not often found in the confusion. But chaos almost always ends in change. Our story is about a just such a time: the winter of 1918, after World War I had ended. To many the formal world had collapsed, and to others all things were possible.

French Premier and Minister of War Georges Clemenceau had just been in Lille, on the road from Paris to Calais in the heartland of Flanders, in October 1918. At La Citadelle, the old pentagon-shaped army outpost hovering over the central city, he had enthusiastically congratulated the exhausted troops who had only recently recaptured the city. In this great fortress build by the Marquis Vauban, across from the Roman arch guarding the road to Paris, those who were neither gassed nor shot gathered to hear the man they called The Tiger. They limply stood about or sat on the ground, numb from a scale of killing and destruction for which they had not been prepared by stories from their fathers. Their dark gray woolen uniforms, with muddy ankle wraps, added little color to the damp stone walls. More than people and things were destroyed, but also expectations. Yet the job was not finished, The Tiger had told them. He exhorted them to push for a final victory for France. They roused themselves to roar a cheer as best they could and looked to the mess for a warm meal.

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