Carl's Story

By Noretta Willig

Carl’s Story begins in the woods near St. Mihiel, France, almost a century ago on September 16, 1918. On that victorious day, when the US Army won its first battle in Europe and the war was just days from ending, Carl Willig, a doughboy in company H and the uncle of author, Noretta Willig, was killed.&nb

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilston Associates LLC
• Release date: Sep 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781633933965

Noretta Willig

Noretta Willig, after graduation from Ohio University, began her career in journalism as an editor for PPG Industries magazines. Later, she chose to teach, obtaining a master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh. For 33 years, she taught American and English literature in a suburban Pittsburgh high school. In retirement, she traveled throughout the 50 states and to many foreign countries, including the battlefields of France.

Book preview

NEXT OF KIN

THE PHONE RINGS. Joan Hogan introduces herself as a genealogist in Oregon working for the United States Army. Her quick questions allow no more than "Yes" or No responses.

Are you Noretta Willig?

Your father was Walter S. Willig?

He died in 1973?

Your father’s parents were Henry and Anna Willig?

Your brother Kenneth K. Willig died in 1993?

Your brother Walter S. Willig, Jr., died in 2007?

You have no other siblings?

Your father had only one sibling, a brother, Carl H. Willig?

Carl Willig was killed in World War I?

Had Carl ever married?

Did Carl have any children?

Thank you, Miss Willig. You are the person I’m looking for.

You are Carl’s next of kin.

The Army will be in touch with you.

I can’t tell you anything else because I don’t know any more. Probably, they found something that they want you to know about.

I stand by the phone for several—perhaps many—minutes, my thoughts careening through memories of people, conversations and experiences. Carl has been dead for ninety years. And the words they found something vibrate through my brain. A wallet? His dog tags? Did they have dog tags back then? The image of the young man—my uncle whom I never knew—comes suddenly to mind. Its clarity startles me.

I have his picture.

In the back cellar, I find my Great-Aunt Elsie’s trunk, a wooden box with A & P lettered on the side. When Aunt Elsie went to the nursing home, Kenneth took the trunk. After he died, the trunk was about to be thrown away, so I brought it home. I don’t know why. I stored it for about fifteen years, never opening it. Now, I unlatch and lift the lid.

Hundreds of photographs, two or three deteriorating albums, but mostly a jumble of loose pictures. Not far down are several framed pictures, four generations of relatives: my great-great-uncle, the stern evangelical Protestant minister who spoke only German; my grandmother, Anna, whom we children called Gran Nonnie; my dad, my brothers and me. We are all in there, placed around two family Bibles.

Then, there he is. Carl in his Army uniform wearing his doughboy hat, smiling from a dusty frame with a red poppy still attached, just as my memory saw his face. As I wipe the grime from the glass, Carl and I look at each other across a century of time.

Hello, Carl, I am your next of kin.

THE AUNTS

HE WAS JUST A BOY, his place in the genealogy a century before where I am now, in a cloud of distant memories. So, so long ago.

I spoke to his young, innocent face. You enlisted! You didn’t have to. The war might have been over before the draft got you. I vaguely remember hearing that you went for training to Charlotte, North Carolina, and in April 1918 you sailed to France. Quite an adventure for an 18-year-old, Carl, but only half the story.

As I study his compelling face, my recollections continue in my mind and sometimes aloud.

Why did you go, Carl? Had President Wilson convinced you that you were needed in the war to end all wars? Did you think you would make the world safe for democracy? Was it really such a lofty purpose that took your heart?

Did everyone around you panic when headlines outraged at the sinking of the Lusitania and speculated on German U-Boats in the Gulf of Mexico? Was this war getting uncomfortably close? Maybe you thought you would protect your homeland. Or did you just get mad? Had someone called you Fat Kaiser’s boy? Were you tired of being a German and not a real American? Had the Hate the Hun posters caused you to want to prove your family’s New World allegiance? Maybe you wanted to be somebody—a doughboy, wearing a uniform and traveling Over There.

Or were you just a boy, barely educated, already stuck to labor life-long in the heat and grime of a steel mill? Just a boy, who at eighteen reached for a chance to see the world?

Maybe it was your chance—perhaps your only chance—to get away.

Just to get out!

I remember the story my dad told about the night you broke your leg in the mill during the so-called daylight shift from noon to midnight. You lived with your parents, Henry and Anna, and my dad, your younger brother, behind the family business, the Willig Saloon, a prosperous bar set up on the hill above the National Tube Works.

Carl was due home shortly after work ended, no later than twelve-thirty, and my grandfather always waited for him before closing up for the night. When Carl did not arrive by one in the morning, Henry locked the door. Henry believed in rules, and as long as Carl lived in his house, Henry would enforce them.

When Carl dragged himself painfully to the back porch, his father was sitting at the kitchen table. Carl, seeing him there through the window, tapped on the glass. Henry did not respond. Carl rapped harder; Henry ignored him. Carl, hobbling on his broken leg, pulled himself to the door and, enraged, pounded continuously until, finally, the man, stocky, strong and stubborn, unlocked the door.

Rushing in, Carl picked up his father, drove him across the room and set him on the kitchen table. With his face inches from his father’s, spitting through clenched teeth, Carl snarled, You listen to me now, you son of a bitch. Don’t ever do anything like that to me again. With a slight smile, my dad delivered the punchline: From that night on, old Henry never bothered my brother! Always, then, Dad took a deep breath, shrugged and with a wistful voice said, Carl was tough—wiry and tough.

As I look at the soldier, with his soft expression, he does not look tough to me. Were his alert eyes really the pale gray they appear in the portrait? I would never know the answer to that. Everyone who had ever looked in those eyes is long dead.

Now, it’s just you and me, Carl.

As I set the portrait aside, I again notice the red, paper poppy twisted on the ornate frame. I know Gussie put it there, possibly on the first Armistice Day. This picture is the one that hung in their dining room, next to my baby picture. The thought of that place pulls me back to it. Through my elementary years, we lived just two blocks from my dad’s aunts, my great-aunts. They were always spoken of, collectively, as the Aunts—Lillie, Elsie, and Gussie—Gran Nonnie’s sisters. There were two other children in their family. Elizabeth, my dad’s favorite and a fine teacher, died young. The only boy, Harry, whom the sisters described as so handsome and a bit of a dandy, was seldom seen.

The Aunts’ worn, dark frame house was my most frequent destination. Down the alley and in the long brick path, with grapevines on the right and spring flowering bushes on the left, I entered always through the back door to the kitchen.

In all seasons, this was a fascinating place. In winter, they gathered in the dining room, where, with every door closed and every windowsill padded against drafts, a small, gas-burning heater thawed the room. Lillie, whom my dad called the prima donna, usually lay, covered with a blanket on the floor under the dining room table in front of the hissing gas jets. Elsie, busy in the kitchen, most often baking and always with the oven on for warmth, came in only periodically to hear a few sentences of what was going on. My dad said Elsie was the worker, the only worker in the bunch. About Gussie, the youngest, Dad’s comment was sick all her life and never anything wrong with her. Gussie, wrapped in her chenille bathrobe, wearing white socks and slippers, sat in the Morris reclining chair in the corner. I sat in a straight chair.

Most times, when I first got there, we listened to a soap opera on the radio together. Depending on the day and time, we heard the sage advice of Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins or pondered the age-old question, Could love come to a woman after thirty-five? posed by The Romance of Helen Trent. If I happened to catch Just Plain Bill, I was stuck on its closing song, Polly Wolly Doodle, for days. "For I’m off to Lou’siana. For to see my Susyanna. Sing Polly Wolly Doodle all the day." Apparently, it never left my head!

Because Gussie much preferred talking to listening, she would, on a whim, turn off the radio. Lillie often objected, but Gussie was emphatic. It will be there tomorrow. Whatever Gussie had on her mind was more important than anything else and, she being the baby, everybody quickly agreed. Her topics started with close questioning or positive, often thought-provoking, commentary on my activities and lessons at school. But in a flash, she would switch to something as distant as her lifelong correspondence with Hollywood star Corinne Griffith, widely recognized, she said, as the most beautiful actress on the silent silver screen and, for Gussie, a true personal friend.

Whatever the subject, Gussie’s narratives were fervent and compelling. She began by gazing around the dining room until something struck her or she gathered her thoughts. Often, she looked intently at Carl’s picture on the wall opposite her and then began her tale of the days that changed everyone’s life.

She told me that Henry and Anna, her sister, my grandmother, got the telegram informing them of Carl’s death. But they didn’t believe it, and for good reason! she said. They had just received a letter from Carl himself. In it, he wrote that he had been slightly wounded by shrapnel in a skirmish on August 16. His helmet had saved him; his wound was minor and he was, in fact, as he wrote, in a rest camp behind the lines. He told them to ignore any notification that might come from the Army and assured them, repeatedly, that he was fine.

The Army notice they received said September 16. Can you imagine that, Noretta? Gussie sighed. September 16? August 16? She seemed to be living the uncertainty over again. Naturally, they thought someone made a mistake. Someone wrote the wrong month. That’s all. She paused, her head back on the chair, her eyes searching the ceiling. They could not accept it. They sent a telegram asking for clarification. Was he alive or was he dead? Was he safe or was he gone?

The brilliant days of late September 1918 were clouded by the uncertainty. Gussie said Henry just couldn’t take it. He spoke to no one and worked the bar in silence. Your grandmother was stronger, Gussie said. Besides telling your dad about Carl, the hardest thing she had to do was come and tell us. Lillie just sobbed. Then she went to sleep on her bed, in a chair, on the floor, saying nothing, eating little—just sleeping. Then, she got dressed up and went to town. After that, she never spoke of it again, nor would she tolerate anyone speaking of it to her. My concentration was broken by Lillie stirring under her blanket.

Gussie allowed a long pause before continuing. When she did, she reminisced about those long days of not knowing. She remembered that Elsie baked and cooked, preserved in jars whatever vegetables she could find. She suggested that we invite Anna, Henry, and young Walter to Sunday dinner. Henry didn’t come. It was one of the last times Walter was ever in their home. Gussie made a deep-throated sound to register her disappointment.

Elsie was an excellent cook and prepared enormous meals: rich cream soups, roasted meat with intensely flavored gravy, crusted heavy breads or rolls light as air, velvety mashed potatoes, an array of vegetables, and the best desserts I could ever imagine. Bavarian cream puffs, apple dumplings, mixed berry or Boston cream pies, strudels of all kinds, sponge cake with lemon filling. They always ate in the kitchen. Elsie never sat to eat with them but stood aside wiping her hands again and again on her apron, watching with squinty eyes as her delights disappeared. Gussie began again.

That Sunday after we ate, we took Carl’s picture down from that wall and everyone, even Elsie, sat in the parlor. We talked about him all afternoon. Several times, Elsie or I read from the Bible or a poem. Lillie and your dad were quiet. Your grandmother kept saying, ‘We’ll hope. We must have hope.’ Gussie moaned at the memory. Before they left, we decided that we would have dinner together every Sunday. And we did—at least with Anna—every Sunday except the next Sunday.

The following Saturday, October 5, the answer came. Carl was killed; his body listed as missing.

After hearing this story from Gussie, I remember telling my mother in the kitchen before my dad got home for dinner that I had learned all about Carl. I planned to tell Dad at dinner. My mother turned, faced me directly, and in her most emphatic tone told me, Don’t ever talk about Carl to your father. He doesn’t want to hear anything about him. When I responded that Dad himself sometimes mentioned Carl, she spoke in a measured voice. That doesn’t matter. You are never to go near that subject with him. And then with words that we all knew required absolute obedience, she said, Do you understand me? The only possible answer was Yes.

Not talking about Carl to my mother or my dad did not mean that I could not ask Gussie. I bided my time until one summer evening after we had ice cream. Lillie had gone to her room and Elsie was cleaning up. Gussie and I were on the swing on the back porch. I asked her point-blank why my dad didn’t ever talk about Carl. Without a moment of her usual musing, she said, Oh, because he loved Carl. Not the answer I expected or understood.

I must have registered some puzzlement, because she continued quickly to explain. As boys, they worked together in the saloon. Henry had a good business and he worked hard, but he insisted that everyone work just as hard. She trailed off then on how Henry was a good provider.

Before starting the saloon, he worked in the old Woods Mill that became the National Tube Works of United States Steel. Henry volunteered to be a heater, the hottest, dirtiest, most strenuous job in the mill. Gussie quickly said, Henry made five dollars a day! Nobody made that kind of money then! And sometimes he worked the long shift, which was twenty-four hours straight and earned even more money. After a pause, she added, Henry was a good earner, and once in a while he helped us out, but that was more because of your grandmother.

Gussie told me that my grandmother was the cook at the bar, preparing not only the free food—hard-boiled eggs, cheese and homemade bread that were always on the bar—but also full meals. Some of the workers were bachelors who boarded upstairs. That meant two meals and a packed lunch every day for each of them. Among her specialties were her renowned piccalilli, a green tomato relish, and kartoffeln und apfeln, a potato and apple concoction. I recognized these because my mother tried, for the most part, unsuccessfully, to make them to my dad’s approval. Gussie was musing far off track, so I returned her to the brothers.

Oh, yes, she said, they were very close. She recalled that they had chores together at the hotel and they always looked out for each other, especially Carl for his younger brother. Because of the black soot of the mill and coke ovens, the boys swept the bar floor several times a day and mopped it every night. The chairs and tables were wiped off each time one of the grit-covered workers left.

Henry and most of the patrons who came to Willig’s at that time were most comfortable speaking German. But my family were not immigrants, Gussie declared. All of us and our mother, too, were born in America! She explained that when Anna married Henry, Anna had to relearn German. Anna had only heard it spoken by her grandparents when she was very small. But your grandfather was still a German, Gussie said. "He really did not want to release his mind completely to this Neue Welt. She laughed as she turned to German herself and continued, Your dad and Carl spoke mostly German until Carl went to school. They were German, Noretta. Well, in a way, I guess we all were. But my family had people in the Civil War."

She went on to clarify that Henry had come from Germany when he was only fourteen. That was in— It took her a long time to confirm the year in her mind. In 1882! Carl was born in 1899 and he went to school in 1905. Henry did not become a citizen until the year Carl entered first grade. I never understood why he waited so long. Henry was so much more German than Anna and older, too. But I guess she thought he was a good catch.

Watching the twilight darken, she drifted away again. I had to go home. Maybe another time.

Pulling myself back to the present, I rummage deeper into the trunk and pull out a pile of photographs.

On top is a formal picture of my grandparents with their boys, Carl and Walter. Carl was probably ten or eleven in this one and my dad, three years younger, about seven.

The next picture is Gran Nonnie Willig herself. My dad’s mother was large, raw-boned and stern—formidable with her customary scowl. I don’t remember her ever smiling, and I certainly never saw her laugh. In the photo, she was dressed, as usual, entirely in black. My mother told me