Plainfield High School - Milestone Yearbook (Plainfield, NJ)

Page 9 text:

IEE Osher Coles N father. Run; child, and let him in. I go to bring the supper,’ and she hobbled off-on her tired feet. ee “Heinie has a letter from Minna today,” she remarked when they were all seated round the red table cloth. “He is happy tonight.” Heinie de- voted himself to his wienerwurst, and his bulbous ears grew red. The father chuckled, “Rudie should hear that.” “Ja, Rudie laught always at Heinie. Such a boy he is, Rudie! How he looks at you with his great eyes! Dost thou remember, Hans, how he was always marching, marching, marching, and now he is a fine, big sol- dier? But someone rings! Run quickly, Heinie!”’ “Tt is a letter, meine mutter!” “Das liebe Gott! Give it to me quickly. It is perhaps news of Rudie!”’ She was tearing at the envelope with her clumsy, toil-worn fingers. Heinie waited, swallowing a great lump in his throat, while her near-sighted eyes traveled slowly down the paper. Mechanically she turned a page, and then raised a gray, lifeless mask, the skin of the cheeks drawn tight around its staring eyes. Heinie looked at the papers. They were blackened, and he saw a ragged hole through them and brown stains on the inside ones. Suddenly her hands went up. “Oh, my Rudie, my tall, my strong, my boy, he’s dead, he’s gone, oh, Rudie, my son! my son! my son!” Through that night Heinie lay awake in the next room and always that hoarse moaning. Toward dawn his father came out of the room with haggard face. “We will go back to the Vaterland tomorrow, my son. You will buy the tickets and make all ready.” He went back, closing the door softly behind him. Heinie lay awake. Outside, the paper boys were calling shrilly: “Extry! Extry! Another American ship sunk! Congress calls spe- cial session! Extry! Extry” He listened dully. Tomorrow he would be on the big German liner bound for the fatherland, of which he had been told ever since he was old enough to understand the word. Ten days from tomorrow he would stand on German soil, he would see his mother’s home, his brothers’ graves—the Kaiser! Yes, he would see the Kaiser, but he would not see his little shop dear to him through years of work, or hear the cheery greeting of the young policeman on the corner: “Morning’, Dutch!” He would not see again America, “the land that makes room for all peoples.” Well, it is growing light; he must get his tired bones out of bed and see about those tickets. That afternoon, the three stood on the deck of one of the foreign- bound steamers. In one night the hands of the little mother had lost all their well-known knobby redness, and looked curiously fragile and unreal as they clung to the big father’s arm. Heinie stood beside her, his round, red face aged twenty years. Around them the blue water sparkled as if

Page 8 text:

6 SSE Osis, ANG den oe Mein Vaterland (As told by Adele Patton, Winner of the First Babcock Prize) Reader, if the thought of Germany is to you as a red rag to a bull, if you grow rabid at the name of Wilhelm, and think that each lamp post upon our street corners would be beautified by a Teutonic Adornment, pause! This story is not for you. For we do not attempt to conceal it— our hero is not only roundand unmistakably Teutonic in build, but rejoices in the name of Heinrich. Moreover, he has been brought up from child- hood on sauerkraut and the “Vaterland,” and to him the Kaiser is as Zeus to the Greeks or Ty Cobb to a member of the back lot nine. Yet behold him as he stands upon the doorstep of his little delicatessen shop, his round face lit up with childish enjoyment as he watches the evening struggle between package-laden commuters and ever-active paper boys. Stout as he undoubtedly is, Dutch as he looks, is there anything terrible about him? No “Gott strafe’s’? ever issue from between those mild, pink lips, nor is there anything more bomb-like than a big red cheese concealed within the little shop. Why, then, should we fear? Let us even follow him inside and beard the wild Hun in his den, Within a voice out of the darkness asks in guttural German, “Hast thou the paper, my son?” The gas light flares up in the close little room with its atmosphere of comfort and onions. “Tt is. here, mein mutter. But why dost thou sit in the dark; the gas does not cost so much. We make good money this month, and who knows, in a year—perhaps two—we go back to the “Vaterland,” and thou wilt see again thine old home and friends in Berlin. That will be good, Er, Liebe mutter?” The eyes of the tired little woman by the stove brightened for the first time since that day when her oldest and best-loved son had died a sacrifice to the “Vaterland.”’ She had not grown bitter against her coun- try or grudged it her second son Rudolph; only set! her lips tight, and gone on her daily way, never mentioning the name of the dead and’ leaning more and more on Heinrich, her youngest and American-born son. “Oh, Heinie, my son, I am now so old; if I could go home to the “Vaterland” and to my own people. It is there we belong, not here among strangers. And to think that thou hast never seen the land of thy fathers! Oh, I long to leave this land, this America, and go home.” . “But, meine mutter, this America she is a good land; she is peaceful, and she makes room for all peoples.” “Ja, Ja, she is good, but she is not the “Vaterland.” But there is thy

Page 10 text:

8 PE ee OUR SA ods, there were no sorrow in the world. The little tugs puffed and panted up the bay, and a faint hum came from the giant shapes looming towards the sun. All around them the work was going on, work to accomplish, to achieve, to make things better, work side by side of all people and all races, towards one common end. Suddenly Heinie knew what he had not dared to put in words the night before. He could not go. He could not leave it all. His place was here, here among the people of his birth. Suddenly his words rushed out. “Meine mutter, mein vater, | cannot go. Even for you and Minna I cannot go. All my life I have lived here, and America she is my country. I would fight for her, I would give my life for her. She is my country; I cannot leave her.” The father looked at him bewilderedly. “Gott in Himmel, art thou mad?” “Mein vater I am not mad; I have known sice last night that America is my country. I cannot go.” His tone carried unquestionable convic- tion. The parents glanced at each other in sudden anxiety, and the mother laid a trembling hand upon his arm— “See, Heinie, I have lost two sons; but even that is not so hard to bear as that my youngest should be a traitor to the Vaterland. For the sake of your dead brothers, I ask you to come; for the sake of Rudolph and Gottlieb.” The long-unmentioned name of the dead was as startling as a sacrilege. “Meine mutter, I cannot.” Frank tears were dimming his gold-rimmed spectacles. He stumbled down the gangway and waved his handkerchief from the dock. No answering wave met him. He was cut off from the ship by a gulf deeper than the deepest part of the ocean that would soon lie between. As he stood on the dock, the world reeling beneath his feet, he became conscious that the newsboys were shouting with unusual animation in their hoarse voices. With an effort he drew his mind back from the vanishing ship and listened. “Extry! Extry! Congress declares war with Germany at last The world slowly righted itself. Heinie knew at last that he was right; that though he had lost parents, love, all that had made his life, he had gained a country, a country that was his to love, serve and defend for ever. With his eyes on the beautiful harbor that he loved, he murmured from the depths ot a loyal heart, “Mein Vaterland.” ?