World War I

Now that I’ve mentioned my father’s very different experiences in World War II, I ought to take some time to mention the experiences of my father’s father, Einar Olsen, in World War I.

Before the war, my grandfather had worked for International Harvester in Chicago. Back then, if you were involved in manufacturing in Chicago, you had to learn German to get by on the shop floor, since many of the machinists were native German speakers.

Since my grandfather was technically competent, a likable chap and looked very Teutonic– even though his ancestry was purely Norwegian– the company picked him for a plum assignment–overseas work. He was sent to Berlitz to learn polite German and then sent off to East Prussia as a sales engineer in 1908.

From what I can tell, a sales engineer’s responsibilities included assembly of the machinery once it was delivered in its crates and then what we would call nowadays, “warranty work” to make sure that the machinery kept on functioning smoothly.

He was a big hit on the job and was befriended by many of the Junkers who were his clients. My grandfather would have stayed there indefinitely had not one of his Junker friends told him that they saw a big war in the offing and that he would be well advised to leave Deutschland in the near future. So, after the 1912 harvest came and went, he asked the company to send him home, which IH did reluctantly.

When the US entered World War I, my grandfather enlisted right away, as did most men of his age. The Army sent him to basic training at Camp McCoy, which was located outside of Sparta, Wisconsin, which is in the west central part of the state. He was there long enough to begin a relationship with my future grandmother, Ada Fish White. But, that isn’t the significant part of the story for our purposes.

My grandfather was by all accounts, a natural born soldier. He was moderately tall, barrel chested and very athletic. He excelled at all aspects of military life. When there was about a month left to go in the training program, everyone was asked to fill out some forms dealing with all sorts of things which would enable the Army to make an intelligent assessment of the trainees and their aptitudes and interests. On the foreign language portion of the questionnaire, my grandfather indicated his proficiency in spoken German.

Two weeks later, my grandfather was ordered to report to the office of the base commander. There he met a bird colonel from Military Intelligence who initiated a conversation in German. My grandfather was surprised, but noting the brass on his lapels that indicated that he was in Military Intelligence, my grandfather assumed that he was being interviewed for a position in MI, maybe even as a spy.

He was wrong. A wave of anti-German hysteria was sweeping the country and even though my grandfather was a native born American of Norwegian-American ancestry, his four years in East Prussia and his personal relationship with some of the Junkers made him a security risk. So he was promoted to civilian that day.

The last time that I spoke to my grandfather before he died, he was still bitter over his treatment by the Army and that was over forty years later. Personally, I ascribed his experience to the Catch-22 principle, but I’m the product of a much more cynical age.