I will occasionally blog about stuff that my sisters and I found when we cleaned out our late parents’ house.
For instance, here are two books that we found. They belonged to our paternal great-grandfather, Leonard Robert Gaffron. (My uncle Leonard and my father Robert were both named after him.)
Leonard Gaffron was a veteran of World War I.
The book above says on the cover:
80th
DIVISION
SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS
IN THE
WORLD WAR
PREPARED BY THE
AMERICAN BATTLE MONUMENTS
COMMISSION
The inside page says the same thing, with this added:
United States Government
Printing Office
1944
So, while my grandfather Carl was away serving in World War II in 1944, his own father, Leonard, received a book from the US government about a summary of operations in World War I.
The second book says the following on the cover:
WAR DIARY
of
COMPANY “E”
320TH INFANTRY
Compiled upon the occasion of the Eighth Annual Reunion, commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the Company’s organization at Camp Lee, Virginia
September Nineteen Seventeen
June Nineteen Nineteen
The inside page says:
DEDICATED to all the men of Company “E”, 320th Infantry [80th Division], who made the supreme sacrifice.
According to family lore, Leonard Gaffron was a tremendous athlete. Before the War, he pitched a no hitter in a local baseball game. During the War, the Germans wounded him in the arm that he used to pitch the no-hitter. The Germans also took him prisoner. The Germans released him, but he lost the use of that arm due to his injury. At some point after the War, he went back to playing baseball- with his other arm. He pitched another no-hitter.
According to my dad, his Grandfather Gaffron earned a living by farming with one arm and two mules. He named one of the mules Kaiser Bill. (This was a reference to Kaiser Willhelm II, the German emperor during World War I.)
Years after World War I, a local newspaper interviewed my great-grandfather about his experience as a POW. My dad’s cousin brought a copy of this article to last year’s family reunion. He put the article up on a big screen so that we could all read it.
The article left out stuff that we Gaffrons had heard in the family lore. For instance, the article downplayed my great-grandfather’s ability to communicate with his German captors. My great-grandfather spoke German fluently. His parents were German immigrants.
My family concluded last fall that the article differed from the family lore because the article writer – or my great-grandfather, or both of them – didn’t want to draw attention to his German immigrant background. Somebody was apparently worried about the optics of his experience as a POW.
I never met Leonard Gaffron because he died before I was born. I have no idea if the Gaffrons who immigrated from Germany were a bunch of jerks. This doesn’t matter. Leonard had to farm and play baseball with one arm after he was captured as a POW in the War. From the family lore, the household struggled between World War I and World War II. The Great Depression happened, everyone struggled, but Leonard had to struggle with one arm.
Leonard’s son Carl went off to serve the U.S. in World War II. Then Carl came home and eventually married into another German immigrant family.
While we consider ourselves Americans now, some used to consider us outsiders. Interesting how a generation or two can affect our viewpoints.
