The War to End All Wars

One hundred years ago yesterday – at the 11th hour or the 11th day of the 11th month – World War One ended. No one was calling it World War One, because no one was anticipating World War Two. It was, however, called the First World War because it was, well, the first war that involved most of the world.

Mostly it was called the Great War. Or the World War. Or, in the maternal branch of my family tree, Der Weltkrieg.

The total killed in Der Weltkrieg – all sides – is estimated to be roughly 16 million. Ten million of those were military personnel, and 12 percent of that number came from Austria. I’m guessing that this means the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in which case, a couple of those killed were my great uncles.

My grandfather, Jacob Wolf, was from a German town, Neue Banat, which was in the far out, non-glamorous reaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He came from a large family, mostly boys. I don’t know the details, but a bunch of them served, and they were on the frontlines, in the trenches. I don’t know the names of the brothers who died – Michael? Nick? – but Jake survived and decided he wasn’t going to wait around and see what was coming up next. So a few years after Der Weltkrieg, he got on the boat with my grandmother and my toddler mother and headed to America.

Fast forward, and didn’t one brutal, dumb, and brutally dumb war lead to another one.

By this point, Jake was an American citizen, naturalized, as were my grandmother and mother. He prospered in Chicago. A butcher by trade, he owned a successful grocery store, a bungalow in a very nice North Side neighborhood, rental apartments, and a second home (“The Country House”) on a lake about 50 miles outside of the city. He was a Republican – when my mother voted for the first time, she went to the polls with her father and, as she told us, proudly cancelled his vote out. And he was a baseball fan. (I apparently inherited my affinity for the game from both sides.)

By 1941, Jake had three more children – Amerikaners – two of them boys, too young for the war. (Jake and Magdalena rounded out their family in January 1945 with the arrival of my Aunt Kay.) But Jake also had two future sons-in-law, as yet unbeknownst to him or to the brides-to-be, who both spent the war in the Navy. That would be my father and my Uncle Ted (my Aunt Mary’s husband). Later, Jake’s boys were both in the service, my Uncle Jack in the Coast Guard – for some reason, this was a great source of amusement to those Navy men, my father and Ted, who kidded Jack about Hooligan’s Navy. Bob was in the Army.

During World War Two, Jake closely followed the war news. My mother recalled him reading the casualty lists of the Chicago boys killed or wounded, which were published in the newspaper. She recalled him reading the names out loud, crying as he did.

More than most, Jake Wolf knew what war was all about. He had seen the devastation up close and personal, had seen what it meant to parent to lose their boys. Jake knew.

On Veterans Day, we celebrate our vets. And so we should. So a shout out to those who served in our military – Navy, Army, Marines, Air Force, and – yes! – Hooligan’s Navy. But this year I’m adding Jake Wolf to the list.

He served in what was supposed to be the war to end all wars. That didn’t work out, but not through lack of desire on Jake’s part.

I didn’t know my grandfather. He died before my second birthday. But have a great picture of him, decked out in a Hawaiian shirt no less, holding me in the yard of The Country House.

Happy Veterans Day, Grandpa!