Suddenly a Larger World: Sons of Peter Olaf

By Richard H. Grabmeier

As the United States prepares to enter the First World War the family of Peter Olaf is secure in their resort home in Northern Minnesota. But then Christian, the oldest of the sons, is dumped by his girlfriend and decides to enlist in the Canadian air force. In less than a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors Press
• Release date: Sep 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781643147574

Richard H. Grabmeier

Richard H. Grabmeier started writing as a Heavy Equipment instructor and technical writer with the rank of Staff Sergeant at the Army Engineer School in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. In 1957 he served with a Military Assistance Advisory Group, training Vietnamese soldiers in Saigon, Vietnam. His civilian career included training workers in the construction of early computer memory systems and the supervision of heavy construction and transportation equipment maintenance. Later, he served as a school board chairman and an insurance company president. He is now retired and writes novels because he enjoys mental stimulation. Across the Chasm is his fourth published novel.

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Copyright © 2022 by Richard H. Grabmeier

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-64314-755-0 (Paperback)

978-1-64314-756-7 (Hardback)

978-1-64314-757-4 (E-book)

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Contents

Chapter 1 IN THE TRENCHES

Chapter 2 THE BEGINNINGS

Chapter 3 HISTORY DECIDES

Chapter 4 IN THE AIR

Chapter 5 A TIME OF DECISION

Chapter 6 TRAINING CAMP

Chapter 7 TANKER

Chapter 8 A NEW ISSUE

Chapter 9 A NEW WORLD

Chapter 10 THE PUSH BEGINS

Chapter 11 MUD AND FIRE

Chapter 12 AIR WAR

Chapter 13 A REUNION OF SORTS

Chapter 14 SEARCH FOR THE PAST

Chapter 15 SIR GEORGE JOHN WHITLEY

Chapter 16 THE BERGERON

Chapter 17 A NEW CONCERN

Chapter 18 FINDING CHRISTIAN

Chapter 19 THE HOME FRONT

Chapter 20 LET IT HAPPEN

Chapter 21 CRISIS IN FRANCE

Chapter 22 THE NEW YEAR

Chapter 23 NEW BEGINNINGS

Chapter 24 DAYS OF CHANGE

Chapter 25 A NEW VENTURE

Chapter 26 WHAT NOW, CHARLES?

Chapter 27 RANCHER SVEN

Chapter 28 A PLACE OF PEACE

Chapter 29 WALK ABOUT

Chapter 30 LIFE CHANGES

Chapter 31 SUDDENLY DIFFERENT

Chapter 1

IN THE TRENCHES

C

harles gently laid the

German soldier back against the muddy wall of the shell crater, then reached with a grimy hand and carefully closed the lids over his death-dulled eyes. Wearily, he sat down beside the still form and studied the soldier’s pale face in the harsh light of a starshell as it floated to earth. Like himself, the soldier had been too young to die, especially in a hellish place like this battlefield in France in 1918. Charles was glad that had not been his own rifle or bayonet that had killed the lad, but rather a shell fragment that tore into his innards.

The end had not come quickly or easily for the young soldier. He had cried like a small boy, as much from the fear of dying as from the pain, Charles suspected. Charles had held the soldier in his arms for a long time, trying to give him some comfort as death approached. There was little he could do but gently stroke the youth’s forehead as he lay there, delirious and staring skyward with eyes that were filled with fear and pain.

It was hard when the soldier cried out from time to time, Mein Mutter! because Charles thought of how it would be if their places were reversed. Would he cry out for his stepmother, Sarah, or would he cry out for his birth mother, Lucille, taken from him when he was only two and a half years old? He remembered his birth mother vaguely, as a little boy remembers those close to him—little bits and pieces of happiness and sadness all sort of mixed up together. But when he tried to remember exactly what she looked like, all he got were the images from old photographs, prim and stiffly posed.

Then suddenly the lad stiffened and lurched to a sitting position. Charles, startled, let go of him and leaped to his feet. He couldn’t see the young soldier’s face in the murky darkness but he didn’t need to—he knew what was happening—he had seen it before. The lad cried out in a loud voice, Mein Gott, Ich kommen! Then he fell forward at Charles’s feet.

It was strange, Charles thought, how when the star shell went up and he leapt into the shell hole nearly on top of the wounded man, his first thought had been to give aid. Yet, if the soldier had not been wounded, Charles would have tried to kill him. Such are the ways of war, he reflected, the giving of aid was the last remaining vestige of humanity left in him. All else had been torn from his soul or buried in the depths of the terror that was his constant companion now.

The light of the flare subsided, leaving Charles and the dead soldier alone in the damp murk of the night. A whistling scream overhead announced the arrival of yet another shell, cast into the darkness by a German gun. He scarcely bothered to duck down anymore, so worn were his senses after five days at the front, five days in a hell of falling artillery shells and chattering machine guns. The Germans loved their maschinengewehrs and they had a lot of them. There was not a niche in the front between the Australian and German lines that was not guarded by machine guns on both sides. The German standard was the MG08, a heavy water-cooled gun that could fire 400 rounds a minute. The British used the Vickers water-cooled gun as their primary machine gun. Both were devastating to infantry soldiers armed with rifles.

Always there were the shells, splattering mud and a pieces of long destroyed trees into the air. Sometimes a howitzer would hit a trench directly and some of the pieces that fell back to earth would be parts of torn bodies. They would be unrecognizable as such, except for a hand, perhaps, pale and bloodless as wax, or an ear with a portion of scalp clinging to it. These were the things that bored into men’s minds and caused them to sit staring sullenly into space or to be awakened from a fitful sleep by recurring images of daytime horrors.

Bodies were the reason he was here now, crouched low in a crater blown deep in the mud by a German howitzer shell. His platoon had crept out in the darkness to retrieve the corpses of those unfortunates killed in yet another futile charge across no man’s land. Most of the bodies would be tangled in the German barbed wire where the machine guns had caught them and the detail would have to cut the wire to free them. It was a tense and horrid business, being there in reach of the same guns that had created the corpses, while extricating the bullet torn bodies of men you might have played poker with the night before.

It was worse though when they’d find soldiers who were still clinging to life. They’d cry out with the pain of being moved unless they were gagged and you had to carry them back on stretchers as carefully as you could. The dead one’s didn’t care how they were handled, you could drag them by their legs if you had to.

This time it would have been all right if the Germans hadn’t started shooting flares up just as they crossed the first barbed wire. It had been only moments until their machines guns started chattering and men fell. God, how he hated the machine guns! The artillery was bad, but you had a chance unless a shell fell right on you and then the end was instantaneous. But the damned machine guns—you knew they were and there wasn’t any running from them once they opened up. You found a hole or you were killed or maimed and only God knows which is worse.

Perhaps, Charles reflected, being badly shot up was worse, especially if you lived to be a cripple, but dead was dead, final and releasing. That was how most of the men who were hit wound up, wounded and dying slowly or killed outright, but eventually they were dead and out of it. But being shot up and surviving was a different matter.

He had made a friend when he first came to the Western front and didn’t know that it was not the thing to do. The veterans didn’t make friends. They were civil enough, but they stayed aloof as Charles now did. At first he wondered why and then he got close to William, a chubby little farmer from Iowa, who lived every day with a grin. William had relatives in France just as Charles’s half-brother Christian did and he had enlisted in the American Expeditionary Forces out of sympathy for his kinfolk.

Charles and William had become close, too close, almost like brothers though they had only known each other for a few weeks. The front will do that to you, weeks were like years here and you told each other things you wouldn’t tell your brother. He and William had been like that. He knew about William’s dad and his taste for home cooked whiskey and how his mom had run her husband out of the house with a grub axe handle for getting drunk on Christmas. He knew just about everything about William, he even knew the color of his girlfriend’s eyes, for Chrisakes. Her eyes were a yellowish green William said, almost like a wolf’s, and he teared up remembering it. It wasn’t a thing Charles wanted or needed to know but now he did and he’d never forget it. If he ever got back home he’d have to go and see William’s girlfriend and he’d see for sure if she had wolf eyes.

Charles had told William about his mother and father, Lucille and Peter, and about how his mother had died when he was only a little boy. It got to be too much for William to understand how he’d been raised by his dad and that his brother Christian had been raised by another man, even though his real dad was alive at the time. So to lighten the mood he’d talked about the resort on Lake Pokegama and how he’d take a canoe to go the seven miles to the far end of the lake because rowing a boat was too slow.

Then William got all moon eyed and said he’d never been on a lake so big and fine and could he come up to visit when the war was over. Charles told him he was more than welcome and that he’d put him onto some of the twenty pound northern pike that the lake was full of, just for the fun of fighting them. Then they’d catch a bunch of fat walleyes for the skillet and have a fishy fry with lots of beer to wash the fish down.

But William wouldn’t go to Minnesota, or anywhere else for that matter, a howitzer shell had seen to that. His bunker mates had picked up what pieces of him they could find and the burial boys took the remains back to one of the graveyards that had sprung up in the French countryside. They planted him beneath one of those little brass plaques with his name, rank and unit stamped on it.

Charles had puked for most of that day. And when evening came he was in such a bad way that the captain sent him back behind the lines before his week at the front was up. He had William’s name and address as well as that of girl friend on a piece of paper in the New Testament he always had in a breast pocket of his uniform. He thought of it now and the promise he made to William to see his girl friend if William was killed. It was not the thing to do, he retched harder.

Another flare went up and a German machine gunner sent a few rounds across the top of Charles’s shell hole just to remind him he wasn’t forgotten. He glanced at the dead German and without thinking why, he got closer and ran his hand over the soldier’s breast pockets. There was something in the left one and Charles withdrew a small book inscribed with a gold cross. It fell open in his hand to reveal a much worn, folded piece of paper, a letter, which in turn enclosed the picture of a pretty, young woman.

He closed the book and was about to return it to its place when the first drops of rain began falling. It will be ruined and rotted here, he thought, and she will never know what became of him. With God’s help I may live and I will be able to send it to her one day. He put the book in the oilskin case that protected a map and his last letter from his mother, just as the rain became a deluge. Obscured from the sight of the machine gunner he crawled out of the crater and ran for the Australian lines.

When he got close to the trenches Charles forced himself to walk, slogging through the mud straight-backed and singing The Star spangled Banner loudly, if horribly off key. It was a way of alerting the Canucks that might be on guard that he was an American and not some German who’d lost his way. There were a few of the French Canadians here, scattered among the Australians and the British to translate with the French when the need arose. Some of them couldn’t speak good English, but they knew it from German well enough. Still, when the order to halt came in English he was relieved and he spoke out loudly to identify himself. It’s me, Corporal Hokanson!

Advance to be recognized.

Charles plodded forward in the pouring rain, hands held high, until he could make out a form standing and shoulders above the basketwork of the Canadian trench. He slogged through the last few yards of ooze with his hands still up and the water running down the insides of his sleeves until he could make out a familiar face behind the sights of an Enfield rifle.

You can put the Goddamned rifle down now, Piggy! He growled at the chubby private before him. The kid had been dubbed with the name, not because of his build but because he was always taking about the Yorkshires he raised at his father’s farm in southern Manitoba.

By the Lord Jesus, it is you Charlie!, the kid hollered. Come on down and find a dry spot in the bunker. Damn, we thought for sure you was dead. Roddy said he saw you go down when Fritzy’s machine gun opened up.

Naw, I jumped into a shell hole is all, got to share it with a German kid. Poor guy died a little while later, had shrapnel in his guts.

Better it was him than you, Charlie. Go on down in the bunker, the cooks sent us some fresh spud soup with real sausages in it.

Charles clambered down onto the firing ledge on which Piggy was standing and from there jumped down another three feet to the bottom of the trench. The floor of the trench had been overlaid with a conglomeration of split tree trunks, branches and anything else that would keep a soldier’s legs from sinking in the underlying mud. The makeshift floor did nothing to promote drainage though and Charles splashed his way through inches of water to the higher entrance of the bunker.

He pushed aside the soggy tarpaulin that served as a door and entered the dim and narrow room. A sooty lantern gave feeble illumination to a quartet of dirty and unshaven soldiers playing at cards on a large ammunition box. The air was close with the fumes of the lantern, the odor of unwashed male bodies and the mildew that grew on every surface that could give it sustenance. A few ammunition belts and sauce pan helmets dangled from spikes hammered into the timbers of the ceiling and rude bunks covered with oilskin lined the walls.

The men at the card game turned as he entered and a look of relief and gladness spread across their grimy faces.

God damn, look what’s risen from the grave! Roddy exclaimed, his craggy features lighting up. When I saw you dive, I thought the Boche machine gun got you for sure.

Yeah, Grubner laughed, we was all set to have your funeral, just as soon as we dragged your body in.

Charles gave a weary smile. Yeah and I suppose you guys are praying at my wake right now—who’s winning?

Little Phil, a new replacement, looked pained. Who else but Roddy? He cheats, but he’s too damned big and mean to call him on it. First time I saw a guy draw an ace to three of ‘em when I’m holding one in my hand.

Roddy pinched his nose and blew snot from it, then wiped the remnant on his sleeve.

Quit your crying, Phil. It was just because the decks got mixed together, coulda went in your favor too.

Charles laughed. Heard we got some decent soup—any left?

Over in the corner by Clyde, Roddy said, we wrapped a blanket around the pot to keep it warm.

Charles dropped his Enfield and canteen on a bunk and filled his canteen cup with soup.

Any of our boys get it out there?

Clyde looked up from the letter he was writing. The guys called him Silent Clyde because he seldom spoke. Charles thought it was because he was a rather reluctant Canadian enlistee who’d joined at the pointed suggestion of the queen’s court. He was also the oldest guy there and he’d survived on the front longer than any of them. Things like that tended to make men quiet.

One of the Aussies got it when the machine gun opened up, Clyde said. They got him back to the trench, but he ran out of blood, I guess. I helped carry him over to the meat wagon. Clyde signed. Anyway, its over for him. It’s going to be over for a lot of us real soon.

Why do you say that? Charles asked. There’s guys get it every day. We go out, we get shot and we come running back, then at night we drag back the guys that didn’t make it.

A Canadian called Specs looked up from his cards, his eyes bulging huge behind his thick glasses.

There’s word come down…not official, but almost…we’re about to start a big push. A guy come over from Toul, said there’s more than fifty tanks there. And listen to this, I hear those are French army tanks, Renaults, I guess, but they’ve got fresh trained Yankee crews and they’re coming here!

Yep, Roddy said, and there’s infantry coming with those tanks to reinforce us, a couple of divisions at least. And you know what? They say that old Black Jack Pershing is gonna command them himself. God damn, we’re gonna kick Fritzy’s ass!

Into the late hours, despite the exhaustion of his body, Charles lay awake musing on the ironic twists of fate. He was an American serving in the AEF, attached to an Australian unit (under British command) for no better reason than that his older brother had preceded him to the war. Now he might be rescued, (for this was indeed the case for the beleaguered Australians) by fellow Americans driving French tanks. He smiled in the dark as he thought of it and how this whole course of events had begun. How nearly a whole family of brothers were embroiled in a long, bloody conflict that had, until now, been avoided by their own nation. And it had all started because of a picnic at a lake in Minnesota on a warm summer day in 1916.

Chapter 2

THE BEGINNINGS

T

he four older sons

of Peter and Sarah had just emerged from the crystal water of Lake Pokegama on that afternoon in July. The sun burned down with a vengeance and Peter walked around with an iced wooden bucket, offering everyone bottles of cold root beer. At thirty-seven he was still we muscled, though decidedly heavier than he had been ten years earlier. He was tanned and weathered from constant exposure to the elements and his curly black hair had begun to silver at the sideburns and was receding a bit at the temples. It had a light sprinkling of gray throughout, as did his whiskers, which he kept shaved close. Only his mustache, always impeccably trimmed, seemed to defy the onslaught of time by remaining black.

Have one boys, he smiled, and bring it in with you. Your mom and the girls have the chicken about fried—Christian, is Lillian coming?

She said she was, should have been here already.

Is she coming with a carriage, or is her dad bringing her with the Buick.

With a carriage, I’d guess. She’s too independent to have her dad bring her and I don’t think Barney would let anyone else drive his new automobile.

I figure you’re wrong about that, Chris, his half-brother, Sven, laughed. Look what’s coming!

A sleek, black shape had emerged from the trees that lined the narrow road and came rumbling toward the group. The Buick’s brakes gave a protesting squeal as the big auto rolled to a stop in front of the large, log house. Built by Peter himself, the house was an imposing structure that served as both home and office for the family resort just south of Nesbitt Island. And though it was not as classy as the house he had once owned in Minneapolis, it was roomy and the log structure was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It served the large family well and the view of the lake from the broad, open porch was a constant pleasure to Peter and Sarah.

Lillian Soderberg waved from her perch behind the steering wheel of the big, Buick sedan and opened the door to await Christian’s help in getting down.

Darned tight skirts, she complained, as Christian reached up to her, it’s no wonder they call them hobble skirts, you can’t take steps but a few inches long and stairs are nearly impossible.

At five feet four inches and a healthy one hundred ten pounds, the blond and shapely Lillian was sought after by many of the young men of the area. But she had fallen hard for Christian, who was lean and tall with dark, good looks that were the envy of the same young men who lusted for Lillian.

I thought you’d be here earlier, Lil—did you bring your bathing suit?

Christian put his hands under her armpits and hoisted her down, being careful not to get her against his soggy swimming clothes. Like most of the young men of the area, he hadn’t purchased one of the knee and elbow length swim suits that were popular in the trendy urban areas. Instead, he’d shortened the legs on an old pair of overalls and wore them with a collarless shirt with the sleeves cut off almost to the shoulder.

I was going to, but Daddy and I had an argument and I forgot it, Lillian pouted.

Not about you driving the Buick?

No, letting me have that was a peace offering. She smiled impishly. You know I can get Daddy to give me anything I want…well almost anything.

I know, Christian smiled, but what was the fight about? It must have been a real dandy for Barney to offer you his new Buick.

He didn’t exactly offer it, Lillian said. It was more like he couldn’t stand my crying so he gave in out of desperation. But let’s not talk about it just now. I don’t want to spoil the fun. And besides, I smell your mom’s chicken and I’m hungry.

Sarah met the young couple at the door with a smile for Lillian and an admonition to get dressed in something decent for her sons who were following the blond girl as though she were the very essence of desirability.

Now nearing thirty-nine, Sarah was still an attractive woman, whose beauty and grace made her a favorite dance partner of middle-aged men at wedding dances and socials. Much to Peter’s distress, she had cut her long black hair about a year earlier and now wore the remains in an attractive bob that accented the slender beauty of her neck and her regal bearing.

Come in, Dear, and have a glass of iced tea with me while the boys change, she said. I swear, though the four of them are nearly grown men I still must look after them as though they were little boys.

Christian is very much a man, Lillian smiled, though I rather wish he wasn’t.

Why…what do you mean by that, Lillian? Surely you’re not…

No, nothing like that, Missus Hokanson, it’s just that I think I’ve fallen in love with him.

Oh Lillian, there’s nothing wrong with that, we all think the world of you. And please call me Sarah, two women should use their given name when they’re talking woman talk.

Thank you…Sarah. I know you like me and I love your whole family. It’s just not that way at home. Lillian stopped speaking and looked at the older woman forlornly.

Sarah gazed at the girl questioningly then took her by the hand. This will keep until we’ve had dinner, Dear. Now let’s go out to the kitchen and see how Lucille and Ingrid are doing with the table. My goodness, I don’t know what I’d do without those two, it’ll be a sad day for me when they get homes of their own.

Yes I like them both, but they don’t look at all like sisters, Sarah. Ingie is so big and strong and blond and Lucy is sort of dark and delicate.

Sarah laughed. You mean that after all this time with Christian, you don’t know?

Don’t know what?

That Ingrid and Lucille aren’t sisters.

No, Chris doesn’t talk much about his family’s personal affairs.

Well goodness! It’s not a big secret—Ingrid and Louis are brother and sister—my children by my first husband, Christian Halvorsen. Lucy is Peter’s daughter by his first wife Lucille—that’s why they don’t look alike. The family is split between Hokansons and Halvorsens. Now let’s go have some chicken.

They entered the big, country style kitchen that was the meeting and eating place for the H-clan. Peter had herded Katie and Peter Hokan in from their favorite climbing tree. At seven and nine, they were the youngest members of the family. The four young men, Christian, Sven, Charles and Louis had made their appearance all dressed in their best, with hair slicked until it gleamed.

Everyone sit, Sarah ordered. Then she led Lillian to the best chair, placed beside Christian, and retired to the far end of the long table, opposite Peter.

Eight children! Lillian thought, how much fun it must be. How unlike her home where it was just her parents and her and the empty chair that had been her brother’s.

Peter was beginning a prayer and so Lillian bowed her head. The prayer asked God’s blessings on all of them, including her by name as though God might miss her in the crowd otherwise. Lillian almost snickered at the thought but she forced her face into a serene expression and joined heartily in the Amen.

Sure glad you come, Lil. It’s nice to see a girl’s face besides my sisters, you’re a whole lot prettier too!…Ow!…Doggone Ingie, you don’t have to poke me so hard, your elbow must be made of rock.

It was Louis, brother to Ingrid and altogether different. Where Ingrid was blonde and big boned, Louis was dark and compact with jet black hair, already very handsome at fifteen.

Lilian smiled. "It’s nice to be here Louis, how are you doing with the guitar? Maybe we could sing