New-York tribune., 1919-12-08
Family War Kept Apart
Reunited After s Years
rrteI Heard No Word of Wife and Two Children
tor Three Years Before He Went to Poland and
round Them; Meanwhile Served in A. E. F.

Some stories Of the war end happily.
This is one Of that kind. There isn't
a single tear in it unless you shed
it yourself.
10 begin, down at the Hebrew Shell
terlng and Immigrant Aid Society, 229
East Broadway, are Samuel Ertel, an
American citizen with papers to prove
It; his wife Pearl, also an American,
but with only q hour
grasp OF the language, and their two
sons, Harry, eight years old, and Leo,
six.
Mrs. Ertel is twenty-nine years old,
brown haired, brown-eyed, slender and
with vivid coloring. Sam, thirty-one,
Is smooth shaven citizen with gen.
erous red ears. Harry and Leo wear
the same kind of ears and tight French
jerseys on their little frames. Harry's
second teeth are about half cut and
there is q space between each front
tooth so that his grin suggests the
keyboard of small piano. Scurvy
has left his round head temporarily
bare of tow hair. Leo, the Younger.
has just lost his baby front teeth.
From time to time, as their father
talks to strangers, he gently tweaks
the ears of his sons.
The misfortunes of war kept the
father apart from his family for six
years, so that his boys still look upon
him as an opulent, kindly dispositioned
stranger. AS a red chevron member
Of the A. E. F.. Sam returned to Po-
land few months ago on a Red Cross
train, and found his wife and sons
alive and thin. The four of them
landed from the Lapland, which docked
here Saturday evening, and in day or
two they start for Detroit, where Sam
expects to go to work, in as automobile
factory as a sheet metal worker at Sc
or maybe $8 a day.
Late in 1913 Sam bought steerage
passage to the United States for him
self and railroad tickets, fourth class,
for Pearl and the babies to Konsk, a
small village of thatched roof dwellings
about one hundred versts from War
saw. in the province c, Radon. PEARLS
father was tailor, and it had been
arranged that she and the children
would stay with the old folks until
Sam could earn enough money in Amer
his family to the New World. 1t ouwld
take five or possibly six months, Sam
told her as he kissed her goodby.
Sam landed in Galveston, anG so did
not see the Statue of Liberty. He
went directly to Kansas City, rented q
shabby little room in 1922 East Twen-
ty-second Street and a few months
later was half owner in sheet metal
shop in East Fifteenth Street BY
July, 1914, he had accumulated enough
money to purchase his family's steam
ship tickets and he sent these with a
postal money order for travel expenses
by registered mail.
The newspaper headlines then were
all devoted to the murder at Sarajevo
of the Austrian Archduke Francis
Ferdinand. The steamship tickets and
the postal money order were delivered
TO Mrs Ertel in Konsk and she had
started her baggage for Danzig, expect
ing to follow in day or two when the
Austrian Hungarian declaration of war
on Serbia was followed by a general
many's declaration OF war against Rus
sia and the German invasion of Lux
emhurg.
The dust kicked up by the feet Of
millions of marching men was reflected
in America in great clouds of printers
ink smeared across the front pages of
newspapers. Out in Kansas City Sam
kept reading the newspapers and await
ing feverishly for more, like luckless
crap-shooter waiting for the next roll
of the bones to bring him additional
sorrow
Sam kept on writing to Pearl and
each week he bought postal money
order and enclosed it with his love.
Then one day one of his letters was
returned to him, and across the back
in red ink was inscribed Because of
the war postal service suspended"
Others were returned, though not all.
Sam didn't write so regularly after
that, but he read everything that was
printed in the newspapers about the
war-and much of the space was de-
voted to the atrocities committed by
invading armies.
Along in May, 1915, Sam learned