Short Update on William Weber, Renaissance Man

After my last post, I received a phone call from my Aunt telling me that she liked the post but had a little info that would make it more accurate!  I called her back and discovered that while she doesn't "do" computers, my cousin had printed it out and had taken it over for her to read.  She said she was really pleased with what my blog said, but thought I would want to edit it a bit. 

She mentioned that in spite of his Conscientious Objector status, at some point he had joined the Coast Guard.  She discovered this because she said she found his discharge papers.  Apparently the only job he talked about at that time was a trip across the Atlantic where they were shipping wild horses from the American West to Italy to replenish the horses that had died either in the war or had been decimated by being eaten when times were hard. Because Bill had grown up on a farm and was good with horses he was chosen for this trip. He had told his wife that the crossing was pretty rough going. 

The error in the blog was that Uncle Bill did not help with releasing Jews from the concentration camps but instead was over there working as a part of the American Friend's Service Committee that was run by the Quakers.  He spent two years there. He started out working in Paris before they could get into Germany, and then after Germany was divided up, went to work in the French sector.  He spent a lot of time driving truck and carrying milk and flour and sometimes vegetables through the Rhine River area.  He would dole out milk in buckets.  He drove trucks most of the time, a lot of  it through hazardous winter weather.  The trucks had worn and bad tires and he had a couple of close calls.

When they had gone from France to Germany initially the French officials were telling the Germans to move out of their homes as they were needed by the American Friends Service Volunteers.  Uncle Bill and the others objected and worked to find homes with extra rooms where they could stay without making them leave.  He and a friend of his ended up boarding in the home of a widow who has lost her husband in the battle of Stalingrad.  The house in Koblenz had been largely destroyed by bombings, but she had two rooms.  She and her daughter lived in one room and Bill and his friend lived in the other.  The volunteers also, when not moving supplies around, also helped rebuild homes for the people in the area.  In addition, the Volunteers would get "care packages" from the US that included cigarettes.  As Bill did not smoke, he gave the cigarettes to the widow who then traded them for house repair work.  Bill also started a youth service group in the area which included the widows daughter and, I think my aunt said, a young man who told Bill he was the "first American he had ever seen" and who later (I think she said) went on to become the mayor of Koblenz. 

After his years of service, Bill returned to Wisconsin and later married his sweetheart who became my Aunt and mother of my three cousins. 

Bill stayed in touch with the widow and her daughter for years and later the daughter and her husband owned a hotel in Koblenz and her husband was the president of the hotel association. In 1987 Bill and his wife traveled to Europe and visited them and stayed in their hotel. Seventeen of the original Volunteer members traveled at the same time and were reunited after all those years.  My aunt received a scarf and Uncle Bill received a book about the history of Koblenz and they discovered that the book was dedicated to Uncle Bill. They were given a tour of the city and taken on a cruise down the Rhine River.  They also spent two weeks in Munich.  A link to info on Koblenz that I came across provides a few photos of the area.  My aunt also mentioned that they spent a week with "Bill's former girlfriend" and her husband.  Now THAT simple statement sounds like the beginning of a longer story which would involve all my cousins!! -- but she didn't elaborate.

In 2002 they took a trip to Ireland to visit another woman, Mary Clare, who had been a Volunteer.  They were able to spend two weeks in Dublin visiting with her and her family.  Obviously their volunteer work together forged some strong bonds.  It was very fun to get the phone call from my aunt and to expand the stories about Uncle Bill. 

Now is someone can give me information (no luck yet just using search engines) on how horses were rounded up out West and ended up on ship transports to Europe, and how often this happened, that would be very interesting!