The 11th day of the 11th month

100 years ago today WW1 ended.  When I was a kid and a Civil War Buff I was sorry I hadn’t been aware of the centennial at least so I could think, “Man, the war was fought less than 100 years ago.”  I’ll forgive myself; I was three for the 100th anniversary of Ft. Sumter and just seven for Appotmattox, and on our move from New York City to Wellesley, Mass.  I was more cognizant of the centennial of Little Big Horn in 1976 (“Man, wild Indians were around less than 100 years ago!”)  and very aware of the proximity of WW1 and WW2.  Pippa and I had three of four grandfathers in British uniforms in WW1 and knew two of them.

WW1 seems like so much ancient history.  The 100 years since makes that era seem like the stone age; Kings, Czars (or Tsars as the NYT crossword insists), bi planes, empires.  The history books can tell me how that war affected things afterwards like nationalism, the rise of Hitler, the Soviet Union.  You know, the big stuff.

But today, just now, I thought about it on a smaller scale.  

My father’s father, Louis, came to the US in 1911 from a small town in a distant part of Austro-Hungary; a town called Podkaminen I believe.  Had he stayed a bit longer I supposed he’d have been drafted into the Austrian Army to fight the Russians.  The odds that he would have survived are pretty slim, and certainly he would have died in the holocaust like all of his family that remained there.

I thought about David Hittleman/Ettleman, my mother’s father.  Why did he change his name?  We’ll never know.  David was horribly wounded at the Somme, I think, shot in the hand and gassed.  He died in 1944 from lung problems related to that and apparently suffered from lung issues from the Somme to his death.

(In a bizarre coincidence of history, I visited the Somme in May to see exactly where the Manchester Regiment was located.  The Royal Horse Artillery, Geoffrey Bell’s regiment, was situated right next to them.  It’s possible that our two grandfather’s passed each other at that time. One wonders.)

What if David hadn’t been wounded?  Presumably, he’d have made a life in Manchester and Mom and Gramma Sarah and Aunt Myra would have stayed.  In the event, no me, or Bev, or Geoffrey or Nicho.

As I think about today, that war, and the grand history of its impact, I am drawn to the fact that I’m here because of it.  It’s a gossamer connection, perhaps, to such a distant and foreign event I grant, but then it really does become personal.  

Another thought crops us.  If it hadn’t been for WW1 we wouldn’t have had WW2 and if not,  then what would Dad’s life have been?  Rather than being the young son of immigrants learning to fly a plane in the army and traveling all around the US and the Pacific Theater he’d, I suppose, have gotten a job of some sort out of his Brooklyn high school and been a very different man, a very different father, and I would have grown up far less ‘wordly’ and curious.  But then that brings me back to David Ettleman.  If no WW1, he’d have stayed in Manchester and David Ader would not exist.

For want of a nail, eh wot?