FAMILY OF FALLEN GERMAN SOLDIER INVITED TO EUROPE
City near Ypres to honour veterans from Both sides
Chris Andreae’s grandfather died in the First World War.
He was there on the Western Front in Belgium, killed in the First Battle of Ypres in the fall of 1914.
His letters home to his mother and wife show his movement during his three months at war, from France to Belgium and even into Luxembourg.
The Mount Brydges resident’s grandfather was Lt. Alfred Gustav Andreae, a German officer. Though Belgium was the site of some of the allies’ bloodiest battles against the Germans, Andreae’s roots are not stopping one Ypresarea city from including him in their Remembrance Day celebrations.
In fact, it’s the reason he got an invite in the first place. Andreae is heading to Wervik, about 17 kilometres southeast of Ypres, Belgium, near the border with France. The town has invited the descendants of soldiers from both sides who fought in the area to a special commemoration Nov. 10, the day before the armistice that ended fighting on the Western Front.
Wervik wants to remember the soldiers who fell during the fighting at Kruiseke, just kilometres from the city, between Oct. 19 and 31, 1914.
The elder Andreae was hit in the chest by shrapnel and killed instantly Oct. 23, 1914. A banker before the war, he had only been fighting with the German army three months when he was killed. Though his grandfather fought for an army once vilified by allied nations like Belgium, the spirit of the Nov. 10 commemoration is peace, about remembering lives lost, not sides taken.
His grandfather’s story — and his 85 wartime letters kept and translated into English by his family — have made him more than just a German soldier, Andreae said. They’ve made him human. “He was writing back to his mother in a way that a Canadian or British or French soldier would write back to their mother,” Andreae said.
“You just saw that they were people.”
You fought for Germany because it was your country. Just like you’d fight for Canada.
The elder Andreae was married in 1911. One of his sons was born months before he went off to war. Before the Second World War, one of his sons left for Britain, the younger Andreae’s father settled in Canada. But his family ’s First World War connection doesn’t end there. Andreae’s grandfather on his mother’s side fought for Canada in both world wars. He said having relatives on both sides of the First World War has helped him see that soldiers on both sides were the same and why it is important, 100 years on, to recognize the people who enlisted and never came home. “You fought for Germany because it was your country. Just like you’d fight for Canada,” he said. “I feel like we’re really commemorating the whole war.”