At the parade today, we heard the poem “In Flanders Fields”, which got me thinking. I started looking through papers and found this picture. My great-uncle Werner died at age 27 on the Western Front (St. Quentin), March 20, 1918. He’s on the right in the photo. On the left is Aunt Trudy and in the middle is my grandfather Siegfried. The band on his hat says, “Unterseeboots Flotille Flandern” (Flanders Submarine Flotilla). And there we are back at Flanders (but on the other side).
Below is the family a few years before, in 1909, a year before the oldest daughter, Irene (seated) died at age 17. So you can only imagine that with the photo above, my great-grandparents wanted a photo preserving their remaining children, two of which were in the war and only one of which survived.