The Long Way Home
An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War
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Irving Winkler’s Story
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
A reader from Wichita, Kansas named Carol Kotsch shared this story about her grandfather Irving Winkler:
I stayed up late last night to finish The Long Way Home. This has been a subject of interest to me for many years since your stories were so close to my grandfather’s experiences.
Irving Winkler, like one of your characters, was not an immigrant himself, but the son of a German immigrant who entered the U.S. in 1881 and worked the iron foundries in Chicago. Irving was born in 1895 and eventually moved with his father and mother and brothers to farm cheap land in southwest Kansas, which became the farm where I grew up.
He was drafted on July 14, 1918, in Cimarron, Kansas–I have copies of his induction record–and was sent to Fort Riley in Manhattan, Kansas where he trained as a carpenter, and according to my uncle, helped build some of the barracks. He came down with Spanish flu and was given ice-water baths, which cured him. After he recovered, he was sent to San Antonio, Kelly Field, Texas, where he was part of 3rd Co. 164th D. B Bn, the 79th Balloon Battalion. The balloon crew’s mission was to spy over enemy territory in Europe, and Irving was trained to use a machine gun to defend them if the enemy line advanced. My father has a picture of his dad and the rest of the balloon crew framed in his home. It is a panoramic view of the men and the commanding officers, and you can make out Irving among all the men.
The story goes that Irving’s battalion was shipped out on a train to go overseas, but the Armistice was signed while the train was in Georgia, and the men were sent back. He was honorably discharged in 1919, and married the sister of one of his army buddies.
Some of the German Mennonites in my community of Montezuma were subject to beatings, but the Winkler family was never bothered–Irving was in the service, of course, but his father Otto was a patriotic American who made no secret of where his loyalties were. My uncle said his father had no problems about shooting Germans.
As a child I remember seeing his old uniform in the basement of his house, but it was disposed of by relatives after his death.
I enjoyed very much reading about the experiences of the men who left their homelands and came to America–they were very similar to what Otto went through. I appreciate all the research you did for this book and will be urging my father and uncle to read it as well.
Most sincerely,
Carol Kotsch
Wichita, KS
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