Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline November 11th, 1918 – Allied Trenches, France

 

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Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline November 11^th, 1918 – Allied Trenches, France

 

The sky over France was beginning to brighten when Truffle poked a small reddish-orange head above the sandbags.

The little Pomeranian was filthy.

Mud clung to Truffle's paws and tangled the cream-colored fur beneath Truffle's chest. Nearby, soldiers crowded into a trench carved through a landscape that seemed to have forgotten what trees and grass were supposed to look like. Broken trunks rose from the earth. Shell holes filled with muddy water. Tangled wire disappeared into the morning mist.

This was the Western Front.

 

And on November 11, 1918, something was about to happen that millions of people had prayed for through four terrible years.

The war was going to stop.

Truffle had lived among the soldiers long enough to recognize the sounds of war. Artillery thundered somewhere beyond the horizon. Rifles cracked intermittently across the front. Shells passed overhead with their terrible rushing sound.

But that morning the soldiers were talking about a new sound.

Silence.

 

Word had reached the trenches that representatives of Germany and the Allied powers had agreed to an armistice. The agreement had been concluded that morning in a railway carriage in the forest near Compiègne, France. The ceasefire would take effect at 11:00 a.m.

Eleven o'clock.

The soldiers kept looking at their watches.

Truffle watched the soldiers.

Everyone knew the hour was coming.

Yet the war had not stopped yet.

 

Across the Western Front, the final Allied offensive had been driving German forces backward for months. The campaign remembered as the Hundred Days Offensive had begun in August and continued until the armistice itself.

Now there were only hours left.

Then minutes.

Truffle wandered along the duckboards between boots, packs and rifles. Usually somebody would reach down and scratch behind Truffle's ears.

Not this morning.

The soldiers were watching their watches.

10:50.

Ten minutes.

The distant artillery continued.

Truffle climbed onto an ammunition crate and looked over the parapet.

Somewhere beyond the battered earth were German trenches filled with people doing exactly the same thing.

Waiting.

 

Perhaps that was the strangest part.

Everyone knew the war was ending.

But until the appointed moment, it remained a war.

10:55.

A soldier crouched beside Truffle and checked a wristwatch.

"Five minutes."

Truffle tilted a head.

Five minutes until what?

The soldier lifted Truffle and placed the little dog safely behind the sandbags.

Truffle objected immediately and scrambled back up.

"Stay down."

Truffle stared stubbornly.

Four years of artillery had failed to solve this particular disciplinary problem.

Then came another explosion.

Truffle ducked.

The soldiers did too.

And then everyone checked the time again.

10:58.

Two minutes.

 

The First World War had erupted in the summer of 1914 and spread across Europe and far beyond it. Empires had mobilized millions. Battles had consumed armies on an almost unimaginable scale. Old political orders had begun collapsing under the strain.

Now all that killing had been reduced to the movement of the hands on a watch.

10:59.

Someone whispered:

"One minute."

Truffle climbed onto the sandbags.

Nobody stopped the Pomeranian this time.

The little dog stared across the devastated landscape of the Western Front.

A gun fired in the distance.

Then another.

The seconds passed.

The soldiers waited.

Finally...

Eleven o'clock.

 

The ceasefire took effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

The firing stopped.

Truffle's ears lifted.

The little dog waited for the next explosion.

None came.

The soldiers waited too.

For perhaps the first time some of them could remember, there was no artillery rolling across the horizon.

No machine guns.

No incoming shells.

Only wind moving across the ruined ground.

 

One soldier slowly stood.

Then another.

Somebody climbed onto the firing step and looked across no man's land.

Nothing happened.

Truffle scrambled onto the top of the sandbags.

"Truffle!"

Too late.

The reddish-orange Pomeranian stood completely exposed above the trench.

Every instinct formed during years of warfare told the soldiers what should happen next.

But nothing did.

Truffle stood there.

Alive.

Safe.

 

And suddenly somebody laughed.

Another soldier shouted.

Then the trench exploded, not with shells, but with human voices.

Helmets went into the air.

People embraced.

Flags appeared.

And Truffle began barking furiously at absolutely everyone.

 

British, French and American flags rise above a sea of soldiers. Steel helmets sail through the air. People climb onto the parapets that had sheltered them from enemy fire.

And there, directly in front of them, sits Truffle.

A muddy little reddish-orange Pomeranian.

For once, nobody orders Truffle down.

Someone scoops up the little dog.

Another soldier reaches over.

"Give Truffle here!"

Truffle passes from arm to arm through the trench.

Everybody wants to hold the Pomeranian who has endured the mud, noise and fear alongside them.

 

But eventually the cheering quiets.

Because silence after four years of war was not simply joyous.

It was strange.

The men looked across the landscape.

There were empty places among them.

Friends who should have been celebrating were not there.

The war's human cost was staggering, with millions of soldiers and civilians dead and millions more wounded.

Truffle could not understand numbers like that.

But Truffle understood absence.

 

There were hands that once slipped pieces of food beneath the table.

Hands that once scratched Truffle behind the ears.

Voices that once called Truffle's name.

Some of those voices were gone.

A soldier sat quietly against the trench wall.

Truffle walked over and climbed onto the soldier's lap.

For several minutes, neither moved.

Above them, the flags still fluttered.

The war had stopped.

But peace would take longer.

 

The armistice of November 11 ended the fighting on the Western Front, but it was an armistice rather than the final peace settlement. The formal peace with Germany would come with the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.

On this morning, none of that mattered very much to Truffle.

There was only the silence.

Eventually, Truffle climbed back onto the parapet.

The little dog looked out across the shattered countryside.

The sun was higher now, touching the broken landscape with pale November light.

Behind Truffle stood soldiers from countries that had fought together through the terrible final years of the war. Before Truffle stretched the empty battlefield.

Then someone produced a piece of bread.

Truffle immediately abandoned the contemplation of history.

The soldiers laughed.

And perhaps that laughter was the most remarkable sound of all.

For four years, the trenches of France had echoed with the machinery of industrial warfare.

 

But on November 11, 1918, the guns finally fell silent.

Soldiers could climb above the sandbags without immediately fearing the consequences.

People could imagine going home.

And sitting proudly upon the muddy parapet, reddish-orange fur covered with the dirt of France, was a very small Pomeranian who had survived to witness it.

Truffle had heard the last guns of the Great War.

But what Truffle remembered most was what came afterward.

Silence.

And then...

cheering.

 

And once again, History is gently guided by a tiny paw. 

Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline November 10th, 1871 – Ujiji, Tanzania

 

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Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline November 10^th, 1871 – Ujiji, Tanzania

 

For months, Henry Morton Stanley had been searching the vast interior of Africa for a man much of the outside world feared was dead.

By November 1871, the thirty-year-old journalist had endured disease, exhaustion, dwindling supplies, difficult terrain, and an extraordinary overland journey from the East African coast. The New York Herald had sent Stanley to find the famous Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone, who had disappeared from regular contact with Europe while pursuing one of nineteenth-century geography's great mysteries: the source of the Nile.

 

But Stanley had one advantage history has inexplicably overlooked.

Trotting along at the front of the expedition was a small reddish-orange Pomeranian named Truffle.

Truffle was considerably less interested in the source of the Nile than everyone else.

Truffle was interested in finding Livingstone.

And, if possible, lunch.

 

The expedition had set out from the East African coast in March 1871. Month after month, the caravan pushed inland. Stanley himself suffered serious illnesses during the expedition, yet the search continued toward Lake Tanganyika, one of the enormous lakes of Central Africa.

Every morning, Stanley consulted reports and questioned people about the missing explorer.

And every morning Truffle sniffed the ground and marched confidently ahead as though the entire expedition had been organized at Truffle's personal request.

"Do you actually know where you're going?" Stanley asked.

 

Truffle looked back.

Then continued walking.

Stanley followed.

It was as good a plan as any.

 

David Livingstone had been one of the most famous explorers of the Victorian age. He was also a missionary and a passionate opponent of the East African slave trade. In 1865, Livingstone had set out on another expedition, seeking answers to the unresolved question of the Nile's source. Years passed with little news, fueling concern about whether Livingstone was even alive.

 

The mystery was irresistible to the newspapers.

Could Livingstone be found?

The New York Herald intended to find out.

And so Stanley came.

By November, reports increasingly pointed toward Ujiji, a settlement on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika.

 

On the morning of November 10, 1871, the caravan approached the village.

Truffle suddenly stopped.

The little dog's ears rose.

Beyond the vegetation appeared something blue.

Water.

An enormous sweep of it.

Lake Tanganyika stretched toward distant mountains, glittering beneath the African sun.

And below, among palms and houses, stood Ujiji.

Stanley knew the search might finally be over.

Truffle apparently knew it too.

The Pomeranian bolted forward.

"Truffle!"

Stanley hurried after the reddish-orange blur.

 

People began gathering as the expedition entered the settlement. News of the approaching caravan spread, and a crowd assembled. Somewhere among those people was an older European whom Stanley had traveled across hundreds of miles to find.

Truffle wove between the onlookers.

Stanley followed more slowly.

Then Truffle stopped.

Standing before the Pomeranian was a weathered figure whose appearance bore the unmistakable marks of years spent traveling through Central Africa.

 

The man was David Livingstone.

Truffle stared at Livingstone.

Livingstone stared at Truffle.

The dog barked.

Once.

Stanley emerged from the crowd.

After months of fever, uncertainty and travel, the journalist was finally face-to-face with the man he had been sent to find.

Tradition records Stanley stepping toward Livingstone and delivering one of the most famous greetings in the history of exploration:

"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

 

Truffle looked up at Stanley.

There was hardly anyone else there the question could have applied to.

Still, it was a very good line.

The two explorers shook hands.

The search was over.

 

The scene represented far more than a dramatic newspaper scoop. Livingstone had become an international figure, and his long silence had generated enormous public interest. Stanley's successful mission would transform the journalist into a celebrity and create one of the most enduring stories of nineteenth-century exploration.

But the picture before us captures another version of that famous encounter.

Stanley stands facing the exhausted explorer while holding Truffle prominently between them.

Behind them lies Lake Tanganyika. Village houses and thick vegetation fill the landscape, while local residents watch the remarkable meeting.

 

In the traditional version of the story, Stanley found Livingstone.

In Truffle's version, Stanley merely had the wisdom to follow the dog.

For the next several weeks, the two explorers spent time together, including traveling around the region of Lake Tanganyika. Stanley wanted Livingstone to return, but Livingstone remained committed to continuing the work.

Eventually, Stanley departed.

Livingstone continued exploring Africa and died in 1873, never completing the journey home.

 

Stanley's own story would continue in far more controversial directions. Later expeditions made major contributions to European geographical knowledge of Central Africa, but Stanley's subsequent work for Belgium's King Leopold II helped enable the occupation of the Congo Basin. That later chapter has made Stanley's historical legacy deeply controversial.

 

None of that was known on that November day in 1871.

There was only Ujiji.

Livingstone had been found.

Stanley had achieved the great journalistic triumph that would make the expedition famous.

And Truffle?

Truffle sat between the two explorers, reddish-orange tail curled majestically over the little Pomeranian's back.

Stanley looked at Livingstone.

Livingstone looked at Stanley.

Truffle looked toward the village.

Months of searching had finally ended.

The newspapers would tell the world that Henry Morton Stanley had found David Livingstone on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.

But everyone present knew what really happened.

Truffle found Livingstone.

Stanley simply followed.

 

And once again, History is gently guided by a tiny paw.

Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline November 9th, 1989 – Berlin, Germany

 

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Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline November 9^th, 1989 – Berlin, Germany

 

The night air over Berlin was cold on November 9, 1989, but nobody seemed to notice.

People were pouring into the streets. Cars sounded their horns. Strangers called to one another from sidewalks and apartment windows. All across the divided city, rumors were spreading that something impossible was happening.

And racing along between hundreds of pairs of shoes was a very small reddish-orange Pomeranian named Truffle.

Truffle had no passport. Truffle had no exit visa. And Truffle certainly had waited for this day for a long time.  She was a long foe of Communism, but it’s collapse caught her, like everyone else, by surprise. 

But Truffle knew one thing very well,  She knew excitement when she saw it.

And tonight, Berlin was electric.

For twenty-eight years, the Berlin Wall had divided the city. Families and friends had been separated by concrete barriers, guarded crossings, and a political frontier that had become one of the most recognizable symbols of the Cold War.

But throughout 1989, the communist government of East Germany had been losing its grip. A peaceful revolution was underway, and political change was sweeping across Eastern Europe.

Then, on the evening of November 9, came the mistake that helped change history.

East German official Günter Schabowski appeared at a televised press conference and announced new travel regulations. When asked when the regulations would take effect, Günter Schabowski gave an answer that created the impression that the new policy was effective immediately.

The news spread rapidly.

East Berliners began heading toward the border.

That was when Truffle noticed everyone going in the same direction.

Naturally, Truffle followed.

The crowd grew larger with every street. People arrived at the checkpoints expecting to be allowed through. The border guards had received no clear instructions for handling the enormous numbers gathering before them.

At Bornholmer Straße, the pressure became overwhelming.

The barriers were finally raised at about 10:30 that night, making Bornholmer Straße the first of Berlin's border crossings to open.

Suddenly, the human tide surged forward.

Truffle disappeared into a forest of legs.

"Watch the dog!" someone called.

A pair of hands reached down and lifted the little Pomeranian above the crowd.

Truffle could suddenly see everything.

Thousands of people were moving across a border that, hours earlier, had appeared immovable. The Berlin Wall Foundation records that approximately 20,000 people crossed over the Bösebrücke bridge without checks during the following hour.

Truffle's ears stood straight up.

Whatever was happening, this was clearly bigger than an ordinary evening walk.

As the night continued, Berlin became a gigantic celebration.

People embraced strangers. Cars jammed the streets. Bottles were opened and passed around. Crowds gathered along the Wall.

Eventually, Truffle arrived near the great concrete barrier itself.

Someone had brought a hammer.

WHACK!

The hammer struck the concrete.

Dust flew.

Truffle jumped backward.

Another person began hammering farther down.

WHACK! WHACK!

Small fragments of concrete broke loose.

For nearly three decades, this structure had divided a city.

Tonight people were climbing onto it.

Someone scrambled to the top and reached downward.

"Give me the dog!"

Truffle was lifted from one pair of hands to another.

Up Truffle went.

And suddenly, four tiny paws landed upon one of the most infamous structures of the twentieth century.

Truffle stood on top of the Berlin Wall.

Behind the little reddish-orange Pomeranian rose the illuminated Brandenburg Gate. Below, people stretched their hands upward. Hammers struck concrete on either side. Flags appeared among the crowd.

Someone shouted something from below.

Truffle barked.

The crowd responded.

Truffle barked again.

Another cheer went up.

Within moments, it appeared that Truffle had assumed command of the revolution.

A person beside Truffle swung a hammer against the Wall.

Concrete crumbled away.

For decades, the message of the Wall had been brutally simple: You cannot cross.

Yet now people from both sides were standing together upon the very structure designed to keep them apart.

The Wall was still physically there.

But its power was disappearing before Truffle's eyes.

That was what made the night extraordinary.

Nobody had planned the scene unfolding across Berlin. There had been no military assault on the Wall. No tanks had smashed through it. Ordinary people had simply arrived at the border in such numbers that the system could no longer contain them.

And once the gates opened, there was no putting the night back together.

Somewhere in the crowd below, someone produced perhaps the only thing capable of distracting Truffle from the collapse of European communism.

Sausage.

Truffle immediately began looking for a way down.

Before descending, however, Truffle paused.

The little Pomeranian looked across the crowd, across the Wall and toward the Brandenburg Gate.

The political story was not finished. Germany itself would not reunify until the following year. And communism certainly did not disappear from the entire world that night.

But the opening of the Berlin Wall became one of the defining moments in the collapse of communist rule across Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall Foundation describes November 9 as the night when the peaceful revolution in East Germany and political changes across Eastern Europe succeeded in opening the Wall.

A barrier that had seemed permanent suddenly wasn't.

A symbol of fear became a platform for celebration.

And right in the middle of it all stood a tiny reddish-orange Pomeranian.

Someone finally lifted Truffle down from the Wall.

The little dog vanished into the celebrating crowd, tail held high, while the sound of hammers continued through the Berlin night.

WHACK.

Another piece of concrete fell.

WHACK.

Another disappeared into somebody's pocket as a souvenir.

The Wall had taken years to build, decades to defend and only one extraordinary night to lose its power.

History would remember the politicians, the crowds, the border guards, and the people who had spent years demanding freedom.

But Truffle would remember something else.

Thousands of people had arrived divided by a wall.

By morning, they were celebrating together.

And somewhere among them wandered a dusty little reddish-orange Pomeranian, looking for another piece of sausage and wondering what all the fuss had been about.

 

And once again, History is gently guided by a tiny paw.