FAMILY & FRIEND VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS
Charles "Pappy" Schuch - 1892-1964
World War I Veteran and Double Enlistee
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918 – Armistice Day. The hostilities had mostly ended and the Treaty of Versailles was being drafted. It had been a brutal campaign – this “war to end all wars” – but it was finally ending.
Twenty six year old Charles “Pappy” Schuch had already served his country after enlisting in November of 1911, and training as a coastal artilleryman before serving in the Philippines as a cook – not a surprising assignment as the son of an immigrant baker/brewer. His enlistment peacefully ended in October of 1914 but as storms were brewing in Europe he would re-enlist six months later and serve on David’s Island at the western end of Long Island sound ushering many young men off to war.
On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to Austria-Hungary's throne, and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip while the couple were visiting Sarajevo. In quick order Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia and France, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany after Germany invaded Belgium, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia and Serbia declared war on Germany. Not wanting to be pulled in to the conflict, on August 14, 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announced the U.S. intention to remain neutral. With the threat of new tactics and weapons - trench warfare, poison gas, tanks, U-boats sinking ships – one can understand why.
In the 1800’s the Schuch family lived in Stuttgart, Germany where young men sometimes had to toil four years without pay in apprenticeship. Because he wanted to work for pay, Charles “Carl” “Pappy” Schuch’s father emigrated to America and set up shop on First Avenue in lower Manhattan. Pappy was born in 1892 and reared above the family bakery at 323 First Avenue near Eighteenth Street. Adult male members of the family baked all night over hot coke and then spent half the day in the shop, averaging sixteen hours of work a day, seven days a week.