An Adventure in 1914 is a memoir written by my great-grandfather, Thomas Tileston Wells of New York City. Wells, a lawyer, wrote this document after the harrowing European journey he took in the summer of 1914 with his wife and two children. He had planned on pleasurable hikes in the Swiss and Austrian Tyrol. Instead, he was a witness to history’s greatest train wreck—the outbreak of World War I. Wells wrote poignantly about the mobilization of European armies and its effect on the soldiers’ families. He wrote about the impossibility of using a return ticket on French railway lines when all trains were being used to transport soldiers. Wells was even arrested by Austrian authorities and threatened with immediate execution on the grounds of being a Russian spy! Wells escaped, and he and his family eventually made it back to America, but his manuscript was never published … until now.
In order to properly edit and provide context for my great-grandfather’s memoir, I needed to experience some of what he experienced. In the summer of 2015, I retraced the journey taken by Wells and his family over a century ago. I stayed at hotels where they had stayed, traveled by rail and boat, taking photographs along the way. As a historian (I am the coauthor of two books of military history, America Invades and Italy Invades), I am fascinated by this time period when the world fundamentally changed. Wells was a witness to the start of these tumultuous upheavals in the summer of 1914, and I am delighted to share his Adventure with the world.
www.anadventurein1914.com
