One hundred years ago today, the First World War ended for Fritz Viering. Actually, it had ended a few weeks earlier for him.
He was poisoned by gas in the late summer of 1918. He survived and recovered, but suffered a cough for the rest of his life.
Before that, he was drafted in the fall of 1916 into a Rhenish regiment stationed in the town of Düren, between Cologne and Aachen, Germany. Fritz served with the 3rd Battalion, 10th Company of the 83rd Infantry Regiment in the German Army.
Fritz Viering was an unlikely soldier. He was bookish and artistic. He would read any book he could get his hands on, and create beautiful pencil drawings, despite having no formal training and an 8th grade education. He loved storytelling, and enjoyed talking to anyone, especially about politics. He had impeccable handwriting skills, and he loved to sing.
Sommekämpfer (Soldier on the Somme). Pencil drawing by Fritz Viering, 1922. Viering was a self-taught artist.
Fritz was in boot camp for 5 weeks, and then shipped out to a town near Warsaw in Poland and fought the Russians.
He came down with tonsillitis and was sent to a hospital. In the meantime, his outfit was sent to Palestine to fight the British, who came up from Egypt. He missed that fight, for which he was not sorry.
Then he was shipped to France. There he fought in trench warfare from 1917 to 1918. He was just 20 years old. By then, he couldn’t understand how Germany could win the war. “We took a trench, then they took a trench.” He was sent to Flanders, in Belgium, during the fall of 1917, after the big battles were over, but it was ‘an awful place’.
He fought in the Battle of Amiens, north of Paris, in August of 1918, and held the line at the Somme. Trench warfare on the western front was grueling. Entering into ‘No Man's Land’ during the day meant instant death. All of the movement from the trenches took place at night, because in the daytime they would be subject to the observation of the artillery observers.
It was there on the battlefield that he saw his first British tank. Fritz recalled, “The British tanks drove far inside the German lines. Later on in November, we made a counter-attack and drove the British back. It was then that we saw all these tanks from September, still laying around, either shot or stuck in the mud.”
British Mark I tank at the Battle of the Somme. Photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.
“These tanks only moved 3 miles per hour, that was the highest speed they had, so they didn’t have too much of a chance. On this battlefield, which was nothing but craters of exploded shells, to get through that, they got stuck. The wheels, the treads they got to spinning in the loose ground. And they were simply sitting there.”
An insubordinate Fritz avoids court marshal
”Later on, we held that line for awhile. We didn’t have a regular trench, we just had foxholes. That was the first time I ever got into a conflict with one of the non-commissioned officers. The British were shelling so heavy, day and night, that our soldiers who brought food up to the front lines could not get through. And we had to leave our row and this guy wanted us to go on guard duty with him that night.”
“I told him, ‘Nothing doing. Your food guys got through and ours didn’t. Now for three days, we’ve had nothing to eat, but you didn’t share your food with us. So you can do your own guard duty.”
The officer was furious. “He wanted to report me for court marshal, but he never did. He probably thought ‘that dumb boy, he doesn’t know any better.’”
Wounded by his own hand grenade
”I was wounded in an attack when we took part of a British trench. Accidentally, the way it happened, I got wounded by my own hand grenade.”
“We had taken a trench, and there were two British ‘Tommies’ sitting in a foxhole, and they didn’t come out. I didn’t want to shoot them, because they didn’t have even a rifle with them. They crawled in there when our artillery opened up. So I took one of my hand grenades, which made a lot of noise but wasn’t bad for injuring. A piece of that, I got in my shoulder. Because I was close—only 3 or 4 feet away from those guys. But they surrendered.”
Fritz Viering, (2nd from left, back row) in hospital while recuperating from poison gas, 1918. The second man on the right, a coal miner before the war, was injured while going by train on his way to the front. Note the man on the far left, wearing wooden shoes.
Mustard Gas
Ironically, the injury that finally took Fritz out of the war came from German forces. Mustard gas, introduced by the Germans in 1917, blistered the skin, eyes and lungs, and killed thousands. Fortunately, Fritz’ exposure to the gas was not lethal. But doctors told him that he should work outside in the fresh air for the rest of his life.
Fritz wrote, “While in this hospital, I was the heaviest I ever was. Good food and every day a bottle of beer.” One of his fellow soldiers had lock-jaw. The second man on the right, a coal miner before the war, was injured while going by train on his way to the front. According to Fritz, the man had his arms out the window when they were hit by a passing train, breaking them.
Fritz poses for his passport photo, 1923.
Fritz survived the war, and immigrated to America in 1923, as soon as he possibly could after the U.S. government again allowed immigration from Germany following WWI. The post-war German economy was in shambles. Inflation was rampant, and war reparations left the Weimar Republic bankrupt. When family and friends asked Fritz why he wanted to go to America, his answer was simple: “I’m tired of walking around with holes in my pockets.” It had been the unfulfilled dream of Fritz’ father, a blacksmith, to go to America. Now his father’s dream became his own.
Fritz Viering (standing, far left) poses with fellow travelers sailing to America aboard the steamship ‘Bayern’ in 1923. (Note the dog standing next to Fritz, perfectly posed for the photographer)
He left his hometown of Külte, in Hesse, Germany. He arrived at Ellis Island in New York City on the steamship ‘Bayern’ with $25 in his pocket. In New York, Fritz bought an ice cream cone for 5 cents—the first ice cream cone he’d ever had. He boarded a train and traveled halfway across the country, to the rich and fertile farmland of the Midwest. He got off the train in Reinbeck, Iowa. He worked as a hired farmhand for years, to pay off his trip. He worked as a ranch hand— ‘an American cowboy’ in the Badlands of South Dakota when he wasn’t farming. But that’s another story.
Fritz worked on a ranch in South Dakota, when he wasn’t farming in Iowa.
Fritz said, “There was a saying in the old country about America:
’Das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten’ —The country of unlimited possibilities”
“It has become that to most immigrants. It has given us a chance—as a farmer at least—to get something we never could have acquired in the old country.” The son of the village blacksmith even became a 3rd degree Mason, something that would never have happened in Germany. Fritz became an American citizen in 1929. Two fellow Masons, John Bloom and Tom Mason, stood with Fritz to vouch for his good character before the judge at Fritz’s U.S. naturalization ceremony. Fritz had worked for Mr. Mason as a hired hand until 1932, when he began farming for himself.
Fritz returned to visit Germany in 1936. His homeland had changed dramatically in the 13 years since he left for America. He said, “I got a shock when I boarded the German steamship in New York City—the Bremen—and saw that new German flag, the swastika, in it’s colors. That was the first time I had seen it.”
Even in his home village of Külte, things were different. Old friends with whom Fritz freely discussed politics in the 1920s were now secretive and tight-lipped. Once, when Fritz struck up a conversation with an old acquaintance in town about Hitler and the changes he had seen while traveling, the worried friend glanced over his shoulder and said, “Fritz, you must keep your voice down!” This was not the Germany of his youth.
He spent 3 months in Külte and married a neighbor girl named Augusta. He brought Augusta back to Iowa early in 1937. He wanted to get back to America, because he believed that war was coming. Though his family did not believe that war was imminent, Fritz told them, “Come well through the next war” when he said goodbye. He never saw his parents again.
Together Fritz and Augusta farmed 520 acres east of Beaman, Iowa, and raised a family. Later they bought a farm in Tama county. Their sons, Fred and Walter, both served in the U.S. Army. Fritz and Augusta’s 6 children—Fred, Meta, Linda, Walt, Ilene and Helen—would go on to college and build successful careers in education, farming, and nursing. But that too is another story.
On the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI—Armistice Day—we remember the veterans of all wars. And I remember Fritz, my grandfather who came to America, the country of unlimited possibilities.