Month: November 2018

bookmark_borderPost-369: Great Grandfather No.2 before draft board in 1917

Posted on by Peter

The is a snapshot of one of my four great-grandfathers in 1917-1918. I wrote it upon my discovery online of their WWI draft registration cards.

The others are:

I transcribe the cards below and provide some comments on how the war period turned out for each man. I think I can re-create, with a degree of reliability, a lot of what they were like and how they would have likely stood on the war. Some things I do not know and will pose them as questions. While I never knew any of them, I did now their children in their old age (my grandparents).

Great-Grandfather 2
A native of Norway but in Iowa from about age 6 in the early 1880s; Farmer. Although over 40 when the US entered the war in April 1917 and thus not subject to the first call up, he was required to register in 1918. This card was submitted when he appeared before the draft board of Winnebago County, Iowa:
Picture

Registration Card

1. Name: Bert B. Sveen
2. Permanent Home Address: RFD No. 3, [i.e., rural area near] Forest City, Winnebago [County], Iowa
3. Age in Years: 42
4. Date of Birth: 1875
– Race: White
– U.S. Citizen[ship]: Citizen by father’s naturalization before registrant’s majority
– Present occupation: Farmer
– Employer’s name: Self
– Nearest relative: Mrs. Dina Sveen (wife) at RFD No. 3, Forest City, Winnebago [County], Iowa

“I affirm that I have verified above answers and that they are true,”
[Signed, Bert B. Sveen]

Registrar’s Report: Description of Registrant

– Height: Medium
– Build: Medium
– Color of Eyes: Blue
– Color of Hair: Light Brown
– Has this person lost arm, leg, hand, eye, or is he obviously physically disqualified (Specify.): No

I certify that my answers are true; that the person registered has read or has read to him his own answers; that I have witnessed his signature or mark; and that all of his answers of which I have knowledge are true, except as follows: [Blank]

[Signed by the Registrar of Winnebago County, Iowa]

Date of Registration: Sept. 12, 1918

Bert B. Sveen (left), circa 1920s

Bert Sveen [1875-1966] was not drafted and did not serve in World War I.

Why was he not drafted? What was going on in his life in the 1910s? What would have been his position on intervention in the 1914-1918 war?

Continue reading “Post-369: Great Grandfather No.2 before draft board in 1917”

bookmark_borderPost-368: Great Grandfather No.1 before draft board in 1917

Posted on by Peter

The is a snapshot of one of my four great-grandfathers in 1917-1918. I wrote it upon my discovery online of their WWI draft registration cards.

The others, in order of father’s father’s father to mother’s mother’s father, are:

I transcribe the cards below and provide some comments on how the war period turned out for each man. I think I can re-create, with a degree of reliability, a lot of what they were like and how they would have likely stood on the war. Some things I do not know and will pose them as questions. While I never knew any of them, I did now their children in their old age (my grandparents).

Great-Grandfather 1
A native of Iowa; Farmer; Danish ancestry dating to the 1880s. this card was submitted when he appeared before the Weld County, Colorado, draft board as mandated by law:
Picture

[Transcription of draft card]

Registration Card
1. Name: Peter Christian J—
2. Home Address: Osgood, Colorado
3. Date of Birth: 1893
4. Citizenship: Natural-Born [U.S. citizen]
5. Where were you born? Miller, Iowa, USA
6. If not a citizen, of what country are you a citizen or subject? [No response; not applicable]
7. Occupation: Farmer
8[a]. By whom employed? Self
8[b]. Where employed? Osgood, Weld Co., Colorado
9. Dependents: Wife
10. Married or single? Married
11. What military service have you had? No
12. Do you claim exemption from draft? No

“I affirm that I have verified above answers and that they are true,”
[Signed,] Peter Christian J—.

Registrar’s Report
1[a]. Tall, Medium, or Short? Medium
1[b]. Slender, Medium, or Stout? Medium
2[a]. Color or Eyes: Grey
2[b]. Color of Hair: Brown
2[c]. Bald? No
3. […]Disabled? No

I certify that my answers are true, that the person registered has read his own answers, that I have witnessed his signature, and that all of his answers of which I have knowledge are true, except as follows: [blank].

[Signed by the registrar for Precint 57, Weld County, Colorado]

Date of Registration: June 5, 1917

Peter C. J— (left), late 1918, with wife Ethel and infant son. (The infant is my grandfather. The infant was a lifelong Iowan, like his father. The infant would be involved in farming from boyhood in the 1920s to the mid 1950s, except for two to three years in the Army Air Corps, 1943 to 1945.)

Peter C. J— [1893-1979] was not drafted and did not serve in World War I.

Why was Peter C. not drafted? What was going in his life in the 1910s? What was his (likely) position on the 1914-1918 war? I think I can offer insights into these things as follows:

Continue reading “Post-368: Great Grandfather No.1 before draft board in 1917”

bookmark_borderPost-367: Portraits of four great-grandfathers as young men, in 1917-18, in front of U.S. draft boards

Posted on by Peter
It is still November 2018 as I write, the centenary month of the end of World War I.

In 2014, I wrote a brief post saying that one of my great-grandfather’s had a “piece” of that war; in fact, all of them had at least some piece of the era, as young men in the 1910s. Specifically and concretely, each of my four great-grandfathers had to register for the draft (conscription) in 1917-1918.

I have located all four their draft registration cards and will post the originals and transcribe them in four posts to follow (1, 2, 3, 4), followed by comments/thoughts on each of their individual cases and circumstances in 1917, and some informed conjecture on what they may have thought of the war.

In May 1917, the USA was on the way to raising a multi-million-man army which was to reach a size of 4.35 million when all was said and done, up from a meager peacetime strength of one-hundred-some thousand (1916).

In another sign of lukewarm enthusiasm for the war, only 75,000 U.S. men had volunteered in the month after Congress voted to approve President Wilson’s declaration of war (April 6, 1917), and so in May the government began to plan for a then-unprecedented national registration system for all young-adult men, and a tiered system of eligibility for conscription (based on “exemptions”). All young men had to appear in person before draft boards of their city or county on appointed days to register, under threat of prison for no-shows:

Continue reading “Post-367: Portraits of four great-grandfathers as young men, in 1917-18, in front of U.S. draft boards”

bookmark_borderPost-366: The Book-as-Time-Capsule: My Great Uncle’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930 edition)

Posted on by Peter

I wrote in 2017 about the film All Quiet on the Western Front [1930], which I rewatched recently in honor of the centenary of the end of the 1914-1918 war.

(See also Post-365: Scenes from the End of the Great War, Plus 100 Years.)

Picture
Scene from All Quiet on the Western Front, WWI film

The 1930 film was based on a 1929 novel, Im Westen Nichts Neues ([lit. “In the West, Nothing New [to Report]”) by a German veteran of the 1914-1918 war. The book was a major hit of its time.

A June 1930 printing, English translation (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) was among my grandfather’s books, and it is the rediscovery of it that is inspiration for this post.

Aged a not quite ninety years, here is the book as it appears today:

My grandfather died in the late 1990s but his books and other papers and files remained intact until the 2010s (as my aunt continued to reside in the house) at which time I was able to discover many of them, preserved as they were twenty years or so before, some from decades earlier still.

The oldest few books in the house I believe belonged to my grandfather’s grandfather [1857-1917], which I base on years of publication, subject matter, language, and especially the font used (a few of the oldest volumes use that awful font called Fraktur). Some of the books were those my grandfather bought himself. Others somehow ended up, this way or that way, over the decades, at the house (which my grandfather, his wife, daughters, and other relatives lived in from the 1940s through the 1990s), as in those from relatives. This copy of All Quiet on the Western Front is one of those. It originally belonged to George Kosswig, my grandfather’s brother.

Now, I think this is a great discovery not because it is a rare book (which it is not; it would be easy to find for free in any library, and probably without difficulty online for free somewhere in PDF form, in a pinch, if you really want the text). It is rather, I would say, an example of a “time capsule” in book form.

This book-as-time-capsule idea came to me suddenly to me from the inner cover of this copy of All Quiet: Continue reading “Post-366: The Book-as-Time-Capsule: My Great Uncle’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930 edition)”

bookmark_borderPost-365: Scenes from the End of the Great War, Plus 100 Years

Posted on by Peter

I took special interest in the centenary of the ceasefire (armistice) that ended the 1914-1918 war.

I have written on these pages before about centenary events around the tragic 1914-1918 war, including twice about Nov. 11th:

The Best “November 11th, 1918” Visual for Commemoration

Picture
German soldier (left) lights British soldier’s cigarette, in the aftermath of a September 1918 battle. Location: A field hospital (note the wound dressing on the British soldier’s neck).

Scenes like this (right on desktop version) were repeated across the Western Front on November 11th, 1918, according to reports of those who were there. It seems surreal that the opposing armies immediately put down their guns and began intermingling and celebrating the end of the fratricide at last, in the hours after the ceasefire.

I propose that the above photo is the best possible commemoration of the Armistice, better than any thousand-word write-up anyone could come up with; some pictures, as they say, are worth more. (Though the photograph is not from Armistice Day itself [Nov. 11th] itself, it may as well be; it closely parallels the experience of hundreds of thousands that day.)

The picture symbolizes, at one level, the triumph of humanity and fraternal feeling through/over even the worst of politicians’ blunders. I think it is symbolic, too, of the kind of the European unity and friendship that “could have been” (i.e., there was never any need at all for the 1914-1918 war.)  At once both positive and tragic.

I tried to do my own small commemorations marking the exact 100th ‘hourly’ anniversaries of both the signing of the armistice and its much-more-famous implementation later that day (11 AM Paris time), Continue reading “Post-365: Scenes from the End of the Great War, Plus 100 Years”