THIS MONTH’S NEWS ARTICLE IS NOT ABOUT MATHEMATICS. IT IS ABOUT A VETERAN OF WORLD WAR I – A DOUGHBOY – MY FATHER!
Each year on the 11th of November our country celebrates Veteran’s Day. This is the day our nation has set aside to recognize military veterans of all branches of service for the sacrifices they have made throughout our country’s history; Sacrifices that have ensured our continued freedom. This day of recognition in November of each year originated from the date of the signing of the armistice at the end of World War I. The armistice was signed in a railroad car in the forest near the French village of Compiegne. The document was signed exactly at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month in the year 1918. There are no more living veterans of WWI, but if you know or meet a veteran of any armed conflict from World War II to the Korean or Vietnam Conflicts, or the Gulf, Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts, and you get the chance this coming Veteran’s Day, shake their hand and thank them for their service – and tell them “Welcome Home!”
Private John William Reed, Infantryman
Company F, 358th Infantry
90th Infantry Division
(Wounded at St. Mihiel, France on September 12, 1918)
My father was twenty-two years old when he received his induction notice from the local draft board in Minneapolis, Minnesota on April 22, 1918 (Order # 651, Serial # 356, Division #4). He was ordered to report to the draft board one week later on April 29, 1918 for immediate induction into the United States Army. Immediately after his induction, he was shipped to Camp Davis, Texas for training and deployment with the 358th Infantry of the 90th Infantry Division. In less than two months, he would be on a troop ship headed overseas for the War in France. In less than five months from the day he was inducted, he would find himself in battle near the small French village of St. Mihiel.
The 90th Infantry Division was activated on August 25, 1917 at Camp Travis, Texas. It was nicknamed the “Alamo Division” and sometimes referred to by the enlisted men as the “Tough Ombres” (for Texas and Oklahoma). Initial members of the 90th Division came from Texas and Oklahoma; however, just before the division deployed to France in the summer of 1918, it received a large number of new recruits from other states like Minnesota. The division began its embarkation from Hoboken, New Jersey in early June of 1918, and by June 30th all of the units of the 90th Infantry Division had sailed from Hoboken. The division initially landed in England where, on July 4th, 1918, the 358th Infantry (including my father) paraded before the Lord Mayor of Liverpool. That evening, the entire 358th Infantry was hosted at a banquet given by the city of Liverpool, England.
The 358th Infantry arrived in France shortly thereafter and was stationed at Minot, France. In early September, the unit was moved about 192 km NE to a small village east of Paris in the northeast part of France. The name of the village was “Villers – en – Haye.” It had a population then of only 96 people. In 2007, the population of “Villers – en – Haye” was still only 167).
Their first engagement with the German army came on September 12, 1918, at a town called St. Mihiel. The town was much larger than “Villers – en – Haye” having a population in 1918 of slightly more than 2000 residents. It was located 42 km from “Villers – en – Haye” on the edge of the Meuse River. The town had grown around a Benedictine abbey founded in 709 A.D. At the time of the battle, there were still several Abbey buildings in the town constructed in the 17th and 18th century. The town church had a door that dated back to Roman times. Both the church and the Abby buildings are still there today, undamaged by the fierce fighting that occurred there more than ninety-five years earlier. In 2008, the population of St. Mihiel had increased to 4,816.
The World War I battle that took place at St. Mihiel on September 12 – 14, 1918, was the first major American military offensive of the war. The campaign against the German fortifications at St. Mihiel involved 550,000 men of the U.S. First Army commanded by Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing. The 90th Infantry Division (including the 358th Infantry Regiment) was part of that force.
The three-day campaign led by the U.S. First Army was successful. They forced the Germans to relinquish a military fortification held by the Germans since 1914. In those first three days of battle in mid-September of 1918, the 90th Infantry Division suffered a total of 37 officers and 1,042 enlisted men killed in action and another 266 officers and 8,022 enlisted men wounded and mustard gassed during the battle with the German units.
In just three days, the division had lost more than half of its men! Private John William Reed, Company F, 358th Infantry, was among those wounded and mustard gassed by the Germans that first day of battle, on September 12, 1918. Today, more than 4,150 American soldiers, killed in that September offensive, are buried in the American Military Cemetery at St. Mihiel.
Now for the “Rest of the Story . . . . . !”
More than half a century later, while I was stationed with the U.S. Army in Heidelberg, Germany, my wife and I were visiting the nearby town of Schwetzingen, Germany located several kilometers from Heidelberg. My wife wanted to visit the world famous historical doll maker Ilse Ludecke. While she visited with the doll maker, I practiced my German by conversing with Ilse’s older sister. After I mentioned that my father had fought in France during World War I, she smiled and commented that I was too young to have a father who was in the First World War. “Mein Vater diente im Ersten Weltkrieg” – “My father served in the First World War,” she said. “Sie sind gerade ein Baby. Sie sind zu jung, um einen Vater zu haben, der in diesem Krieg war.” – “You are just a baby. You are too young to have a father who was in that war.”
I then told her that my father had fought near Verdun at St. Mihiel, France in September of 1918 and that he was wounded and mustard gassed by the opposing German forces in that battle. She stared at me and momentarily looked somewhat confused, and then she excused herself and went upstairs, returning shortly clutching a scroll. She handed me the scroll and asked me to read it. As I unrolled the scroll and began reading it (mentally translating the German words into English), I could not believe what I was reading. It was a certificate addressed to Oberst (Colonel) Ludecke, Kommandant (Commander) of the 81st Chemical Brigade for a special mission against the American 90th Infantry Division in September of 1918. It was signed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and dated in 1918.
Without thinking, I turned to her and said “Your father killed my father!” She turned pale and appeared weak-kneed. I quickly put my arm around her shoulders and, realizing the ramifications of what I had just blurted out, I said to her “But he knew enough to marry my mother who was German.” I then told her that my mother’s parents were born in the small town of Mohringen just on the outskirts of Stuttgart. She looked at me and laughed. “Sie sind nicht deutsch, Sie sind Swaibish” – “You are not German, you are Swaibish,” she said. It should be noted that the “Swaibish” are well known throughout Europe as a hard headed (or bull headed) clan of Germans living in the Stuttgart area of Germany.
She said something to her sister Ilse and they laughed about the “Swaibish” revelation. Then the two of them invited my wife and me to accompany them upstairs to their home above the store. I learned later that day when speaking with one of the neighbors that Ilse Ludecke and her sister had never before invited Americans upstairs to their home. As we came up the stairway and entered the large living room, I noticed there were paintings of military officers lining the walls. Judging by the uniforms worn by each of the men in the paintings, most of them dated back before World War I. The older sister pointed to the painting of her father and grandfather as well as one of her great-grandfather telling me that all were once officers in the Prussian Army. She explained that when the American soldiers came through their town during WWII, she and her sister would take the military paintings down and hide them in the closet. When the American soldiers left, they would return the paintings to the wall.
Frau Ludecke walked over to a closet behind a beautiful ornate wood burning stove and returned with a small brown cardboard box. She opened the box and showed me a large piece of shrapnel from a WWI mustard gas shell. The shell fragment was about nine inches in length. She explained that her father did not want to be in the military, that he always wanted to be an artist.
He had brought home this painting he had made depicting a battle scene near Verdun. Painted on the side of this large piece of shrapnel was a scene from one of the small French villages that her father’s unit had shelled. She explained that while the mustard gas had eventually killed my father from his wounds on the battlefield that day in France, her father also died of cancer just a few short years after returning from the war.
She believed her father’s cancer had developed from him mixing the chemicals and handling the mustard gas mortar rounds just as sure as she believed those mustard gas shells that her father had fired upon the American soldiers during the St. Mihiel campaign had caused them to later die of cancer as well. We talked for awhile longer and as we left, Ilse’s sister gave me a hug and whispered in my ear, “Ihr Vater machte eine kluge Wahl, welcher feiner Sohn, den er hat.” – “Your father made a wise choice, what a fine son he has.”
Two weeks later, my family and I left Germany for stateside, and several months later the handmade dolls my wife had ordered arrived at our home. I thought one of the doll boxes was a bit heavy for just the doll and after opening the box and removing the doll, I noticed a second small brown cardboard box at the bottom. Upon opening the box, I noticed the note on top. It read “Besser haben Sie das als wir” – “Better you have this than us.” Inside was the piece of shrapnel she had showed me that day. It was the one her father had picked up on the battlefield and upon which he had painted a portrait of the French village he had shelled and where my father was wounded that September day in 1918. Here is a photo of that mustard gas shell fragment painted by Frau Ludecke’s father:
Below is a photo of my father taken just after he was released from a military hospital in December of 1918. He was medically discharged from the U.S. Army in January of 1919. He spent the next several decades going from one VA hospital to another, courageously fighting against the debilitating effects of the cancer caused by the mustard gas. Dad died in my presence in 1945 – when I was 9 years old – at the Hines VA Hospital, located just outside Chicago in Hines, Illinois. He was only 49 years old.
