Knowing How the Journey Ends: The Arthur Marschke Story

“The world must be made safe for democracy.” With those words on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress to ask for a declaration of war against the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Turkey, thus coming to the aid of England, France, and Russia. As congress cheered and began to carry out the president’s request with patriotic zeal, Wilson returned to the White House, put his head down on his desk, and cried. He knew that many of the young men and women he was sending into battle would die on foreign soil, and the weight of that responsibility was almost unbearable.

Five months and eighteen days later on September 20, Arthur Marschke, the twenty-six-year-old son of Ida and August Marschke, who farmed near Enderlin, journeyed to Fargo to be inducted into the army. The new enlistee was joined by his boyhood sweetheart, Esther Robinson, for what the Enderlin newspaper called “a hasty wedding and all too brief honeymoon.” After two days in Fargo, Arthur bid farewell to his new bride and boarded the train for Camp Dodge, Iowa, an American Expeditionary Force training center.

Like most camps, Dodge was hurriedly constructed in the months following the declaration of war. It provided “basic” arms instruction and a vigorous physical fitness program. Thankfully, by the time Arthur arrived, recruits were no longer training with wooden rifle cutouts and broomsticks.

After basic training at Camp Dodge, he was ordered to Camp Pike not far from Little Rock, Arkansas. At Camp Pike he was assigned to the Machine Gun Company of the 101st Infantry. While there, he received the wonderful news from home that Esther had given birth to a boy whom the couple named Leroy. Soon after, he received a photograph of Esther holding the son he might never meet. Arthur kept it with him at all times.

In July 1918, the expected news came: The 101st Infantry was headed for England and France. The Atlantic crossing was, in Arthur’s words, “very rough.” As he wrote to his cousin, “The ship I was on was not very large so it tossed around at a great rate, first the front end would rear up into the air and then plunge down as tho it was going to the bottom of the sea and at the same time rock from side to side with the water splashing clear up over the top of the ship once in a while.” This caused “a lot of seasickness among the boys.” A generation before, his parents had crossed that same ocean, emigrating from Germany to an unknown life in North Dakota. Arthur was relieved that his ship had avoided German U-boats which infested the shipping lanes to England, but he too faced an unknown future.

He enjoyed his three days in England, which he described as a “very pretty country.” In France the “miles and miles of vineyards loaded with grapes” impressed him as did the white and gray stone buildings and homes. He sampled French wines but, as he wrote to his cousin, “They do not appeal to my taste.”

Little did Arthur Marschke know that by August 1918, the AEF’s 101st Infantry would be ordered onto the blood-soaked ground where the fiercest fighting on the Western Front was taking place: Verdun. The well-fortified city of Verdun and its environs guarded the northern entrance to the plains of Champagne, the approach to the French capital, Paris. The French were determined to hold Verdun; the Germans were just as determined to take Verdun and drive on to Paris.

The German assault started on February 21, 1916, and the initial battle raged on until December. Attacks and counter-attacks; German offensives, French counteroffensives. French artillery fired 24 million rounds at the enemy; the Germans 21 million at Verdun fortifications. Exhausted, the German army fell back in December. The French army had held Verdun. The price in human life was tragically high, but, the battle for Verdun was not over as Arthur Marschke would soon discover. It did not end until the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.

The scars of war became increasingly evident to Arthur. “I’m going to [the] front over shell torn ground and ruined buildings, many of which were just a pile of rocks. Some of the shell craters are 20 to 30 feet in diameter and 10 to 12 feet deep. So you can imagine the terrific force expanded when one of those explodes,” he wrote to his cousin, Hartha, on August 26.

The Germans were still attempting to take Verdun when the AEF was thrown into the battle. “The first day at the front with shells zizzing thru the air, thudding into the ground and then the crashing explosion nearby, and many times overhead, was rather disquieting, but the second night with even a heavier crashing of exploding shells all around and over us we hardly noticed it and slept well,” he wrote to his cousin, probably understating his situation to comfort folks at home.

Mid-September found the 101st Infantry digging in because, as Arthur wrote home, “The Germans are rather peeved on account of us chasing them back so far, and are sending shells and shrapnel over at all times of the day and night, and dropping bombs from aeroplanes in the daytime.” He described the ravages of the war: “There is no work or life of any kind going on. The fields are all idle and most of the towns deserted. Vineyards are stunted in growth and grown to weeds.”

A quiet, rural farm boy thrust into the center of a vicious world war, Arthur found solace from the killing fields in the natural world. While sitting alone in the woods, he was excited to see little red squirrels frolicking in the trees and was comforted by the fact that “beechnut trees grow here in great quantities so the squirrels need not go hungry.” Rabbits were lively in the bushes and he “met a red fox on the path who disappeared into the brush when it seen me coming towards it.”

Arthur wrote home to his wife and parents regularly, so when his letters stopped coming, the family began to worry. Alarmed over the fate of their son, the Marschkes sent an inquiry to the War Department.

As he lay dying on the field of battle, he pulled out the photograph of Esther and Leroy with their address scribbled on the back, and using the German he had learned from his immigrant parents, begged an enemy German soldier to send the photograph home to his wife in Enderlin.

The army’s response was bone-chilling. “ARTHUR MARSCHKE MISSING IN ACTION,” the headline in the Enderlin Independent informed its readers. The newspaper held out hope: “While all Enderlin mourns with the bereaved relatives, yet there is one ray of hope and we will not give up the thought of seeing Arthur until the last report of corrections is available.” There was no ray of hope. Two weeks before the end of the war on October 28, Arthur Marschke was killed holding off a German advance at Beaumont not far from Verdun. After weeks of heart-wrenching waiting, the family received official notice: “Killed in Action.”

But Arthur’s story does not end there. As he lay dying on the field of battle, he pulled out the photograph of Esther and Leroy with their address scribbled on the back, and using the German he had learned from his immigrant parents, begged an enemy German soldier to send the photograph home to his wife in Enderlin. The German agreed, and we can only assume that Arthur died comforted by the knowledge that his last love letter to his wife and son would find its way home. War, however, does not yield to human compassion and later in the same battle, the unknown German soldier was also mortally wounded, taking the first person account of Arthur’s final moments with him. Yet, before he died, he asked his comrade, Herman Suit, to carry out Arthur’s wishes. Suit agreed.

At home in Enderlin, Esther, August, and Ida Marschke knew that Arthur had been killed, but were still haunted by the unknown. Had he received a proper burial? Had he suffered? Was he alone? Then four years later in late September 1922, Esther received a letter and the photograph from Herman Suit. German regulations had not allowed Suit to fulfill Arthur’s dying request until four years after the end of the war. The German veteran informed Esther that Arthur had fallen during an AEF attack on the German forces at Beaumont near Verdun on October 28, 1918, and was buried in a mass grave on the battlefield. Because of the uplifting human spirit of two German soldiers, the Enderlin folks now knew how Arthur’s journey had ended, and Arthur’s dying wish had been granted. There was valor on both sides of the battle line.

Historian Joy Hakim put the Great War in perspective: “Like the Civil War in America, it became ugly and hateful. Nine million men died— more than the whole population of New York City today. It left scars and wounds that refused to heal. It changed the fate of the world. But no one knew that when it started.” When the war ended, 1,305 North Dakotans were among the dead. Arthur Marshcke and the other 1,304 had made the supreme sacrifice for their country.

Arthur Marschke

A special thank you to Fredric Bohm for granting access to his family archives. www.fredricbohm.com