On April 6th, 1917 the United States declared war on Germany and entered in what would come to be called “The Great War.” Up to this point, the 54 German commercial vessels in U.S. ports had been free to leave. Now, the ships were detained and their crews became prisoners of war. The men were initially interned on Ellis Island in New York. Then in order to remove them from the public eye and away from large population centers, two thousand of these men found themselves on a train to the quiet resort town of Hot Springs, nestled in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The Mountain Park Hotel was provided by the Rumbough family to house the officers and the sailors built for themselves an “Alpine Village” on the hotel grounds. It was a decent place, for an internment camp, and was known by locals as “the prison from which no one wanted to escape.” The men stayed in Hot Springs with little incident for more than a year when an outbreak of typhoid fever hit the camp in August of 1918, just before the war’s end.
Mountain Park Hotel in Hot Springs, N.C.
Over 200 men became seriously ill and 26 died in Hot Springs. The medical facilities in Hot Springs being ill-equipped to handle an outbreak of this size, the decision was made to ship the ill to nearby Asheville for treatment. On August 15th, 1918 a special two section Southern Railroad train was specially fitted to carry 186 men in cots on baggage cars to Biltmore Station. From there, horse drawn carriages carried them up to the hospital at Kenilworth. Some did not survive the journey. Eighteen men in all passed away over the next few months – among them a bandmaster, assistant engineer, stokers, sailors, stewards, firemen, workmen, a joiner, and a carpenter. Had they lived for just a few short months more, they would have been free men following Armistice Day on November 11th, 1918. They were quietly buried in Riverside Cemetery by McKoy & Hare Funeral Company with little ceremony.
___
For thirteen years the cemetery plot lay unmarked and neglected in Riverside, in the shadow of the imposing Baker-Rumbough mausoleum (the same family who had leased the hotel and land to the U.S. Government for the internment camp.) Germany had been tasked with making arrangements for the sailors, but it seemed increasingly likely that they would be forgotten in history. This changed in 1932 when Thomas Bookhart Black, former commander of the Kiffin Rockwell Post No. 2 American Legion, happened across the lonely graves while attending the funeral of a friend and fellow veteran in a nearby section. The thought of the graves remaining in this state so bothered him that he began formulating a plan to raise funds to properly honor the German sailors. He presented this idea to the Kiffin Rockwell Post and it was met with overwhelming enthusiasm. Funds were quickly raised for the project and G.B. Nix, a local monument mason who had bought out W.O. Wolfe’s business, was commissioned to create the enormous granite marker. Local florist Otto Busick volunteered to landscape the lot free of charge and Haywood Parker of the Asheville Cemetery Company arranged for perpetual care. Mr. Black, alongside fellow Legionnaire Curtis Bynum began preparations for the dedication ceremony which was beginning to draw attention from both Washington D.C. and Berlin.
G.B. Nix carving the monument to the German prisoners.
___
Monument as seen in 1931
On the cold afternoon of November 20th, 1932, a large procession formed outside of the iron gates of Riverside Cemetery. The procession, headed by members of the Kiffin Rockwell Post and of Der Stahlhelm (an organization of former German front line soldiers) carrying the flags of their respective homelands, winded down the white gravel roads of the cemetery to the impressive new monument now standing sentinel over the sailor’s grave sites. Between four and five thousand spectators followed the procession and lined the hillsides surrounding the graves. Mr. Black, who had arranged the proceedings, spoke first:
“We trust that you, your Excellency will convey to your people our simple message of goodwill. We of the South know full well the bitterness of defeat. We know and understand what suffering it entails. We can, and we do sympathize. These men died far from home and kindred. We now say to their friends and countrymen that these brave men have been taken to the bosom of America: that American soil will cherish them: that their names and their lives shall not be forgotten. You Excellency, we are dedicating this monument to your dead heroes. We are dedicating it to their patriotism. We are dedicating it to the cause of peace and good will among men, and to the cause of everlasting peace between you and us. May your people be our people, even as your God is our God.”
After this, the German Ambassador Dr. F.W. von Prittwitz addressed the crowd:
“No commemoration of men whose journey ended during the time of war and national antagonism should end without a resolution for the future. The generation which survived the war not only has the obligation to pay tribute to its victims and their heroism, but it also has a responsibility without example in history toward the coming generation. We have no magic wand at our disposal to solve all the existing difficulties overnight. We cannot promise our children to turn the earth into a paradise in our lifetime. But we can, if we have the will, lay the foundation for a
Dr. von Prittwitz at the dedication.
greater insurance against violence and the return of war in the world if we eliminate the causes of war by making the supreme law of justice the guiding principle of all of our decisions and actions. It is my firm belief that in this respect Germany and the United States Stand on common ground. Let this monument for all time to come remain a reminder of our mutual promise always to unite our forces in striving for peace and progress. “
Following his address Dr. von Prittwitz, flanked by Germans consuls Dr. R.L. Jaeger and J.A. von Dohlen, laid a large floral wreath at the base of the monument. Dr. J. Brainerd Thrall of Asheville delivered the benediction to the crowd. Following this, two more wreaths were laid by the German dignitaries as three volleys were fired by the Legion’s firing squad. The crowd slowly dispersed and made their way quietly back through the cemetery gates passing the section dedicated to American veterans. The ceremony had been broadcast nationally by NBC radio and in Germany via shortwave courtesy of the Reichs Fundsfunk Gesellschafft.
___
In the spirit of the speech given by Mr. Black over eighty years ago and for the promise he made therein that the names and lives of those unfortunate seamen will not be forgotten, here are the names of the eighteen sailors who never made it home:
Historic Riverside Cemetery 