Samuel Roseberry died December 21st after a long illness. You don't know the name but his passing is worth noting. Mr. Roseberry was one of a relative handful of remaining World War I veterans alive in the USA today. It is estimated that there are less than 500 veterans of that war still with us.
Whatever story they had to tell, it is fair to say that it had better have been told by now. For the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who marched off to war in Europe in 1914-1917, their story has gone to the grave with them. Or they remain in the memories of their grandchildren - people like me. My grandfather was a lumberjack in northern Wisconsin when the call to arms came. Despite the fact that neither he nor others from the area around Tigerton spoke good English - German was their first language - they answered the call. And served admirably. An American of German ancestry warring against the Germans.
What a story that in itself must have been. Cousins fighting cousins. Fuhrmans killing Fuhrmanns. His was an American story. Heinrich, son of Gustav, ein auswanderer von der alten land sein, willing to risk his life for ... the United States of America. Like his fellow veterans, my grandfather never talked about his experiences in France. He chopped down trees for a living, then went off to war and fought the Germans, returned to Wisconsin, married my grandmother, Ida, provided for and raised a large family. A family that included my father, Harold Fuhrman, a man who was destined to answer a similar call and to go off to fight the Germans himself many years later in a place called Normandy.
End of story. Unfortunately.
My grandfather died a quarter-century ago. Son, husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, now great-great-grandfather to Chase, Kaid, and Jayla, lumberjack, hero. American. A marker in a cemetery. Dwindling memories.
A generation of our collective family passing into history.
