Chapter 1. Family History
At seventy-one, I am surprised to have survived long enough to tell this story, and that I was born at all. Imagine if just one of your ancestors didn’t survive, you wouldn’t be here. Although there has not been a world war since I was born, and people do not often die in childbirth today, surviving in the ’60s in America could be difficult.
In 1689, my French ancestor survived the Le Chine massacre in Quebec, Canada. Fifteen hundred Iroquois attacked 375 settlers. Although a fort was nearby, the governor ordered the soldiers to stand down. The Indians attacked at night and burned down 80 percent of the settlement. The patriarch of my family and his two oldest sons died fighting the Indians. The ancestor who survived was just a child and he was taken captive. According to the writings of survivors, many of the settlers who didn’t die fighting were tortured to death and eaten.
My Irish ancestors fled to America during the potato famine. Their lands and titles were taken away from them by the English in 1740, so they fled to the Americas rather than starve.
My German grandfather was drafted into the army when he was seventeen. He was a machine gunner on the Eastern Front. Machine gunners had only a 10 percent chance of survival. He won the iron cross at eighteen, when he and his friend changed the course of a battle with Russian troops by themselves. He survived. His friend did not.
Subsequently, he was transported to the Western Front. The German army decided to retreat because they were outnumbered. They left behind about a hundred men, including my grandfather, to trick the French into thinking they were still there. The trick didn’t work for long. The French came at night with bayonets and killed everyone except my grandfather. He was asleep when they came. A French soldier had a bayonet to his chest ready to plunge it in but then noticed the iron cross hanging around his neck on a chain. The French soldier decided he couldn’t kill someone in his sleep who was brave enough to win the iron cross. Therefore, my grandfather ended up spending the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp.
As you can see, a person’s survival is often in God’s hands, while your life is in your own hands. But that is enough background. I have my own story to tell.
