The Last Casualty part 2
Felix Winternitz
As flowers that bloom in thorny lair,
with added beauty gleam
Kind words shine in this world of care,
and all the brighter seem.
—George Budde, “Kind Words,” a poem published at Xavier circa 1915
Budde, the studious Xavier upperclassman, seemed to be regarded best on campus as an emerging poet. In the classroom, the thoughtful English major busied himself with lofty literary ambitions, submerging himself in the foremost prosaic writers of the time. On stage, he performed Moliere and Shakespeare in a dramatic circle known as The Buskin Club. In The Xavierian News fortnightly bulletin, he scribbled out essays on esoteric topics. In the student Athenaeum literary magazine, he authored various installments of bright and fanciful prose. At one instance or another, Budde served as treasurer of the Junior Literary Society, president of the Social League and two terms leading the Acolythical Society. He won commencement merits in Greek, history, English precepts and English composition.
Budde would, nonetheless, be a surprise choice for anyone’s fledgling poet. Born at the close of the rough and rowdy 1800s, the scrappy kid grew up first in gritty downtown Cincinnati and then on the streets of the city’s blue-collar west side. His father, John, was born in Germany, his mother, Elizabeth, in Ohio. George weighed in as third youngest of his siblings: Josie, Mary, Loretto, Norbert and Louis.
The boy lived most of his life in the insular world of the family’s two Price Hill homes. The last Budde home—a buff, brick Colonial with ornate fireplaces and crystal chandeliers—still stands and is often included in the neighborhood’s architectural history tours.
[View a photo gallery of Budde]
[Where is Budde buried?]
The youth joined the newly formed Cincinnati Automobile Club, devoted to promoting the future of a “horseless carriage.” He reveled in the game of croquet with his fiancée. And he played doting big brother and uncle to his extended family.
As he was preparing to graduate from Xavier, though, a dustup began in the Balkans, half a world away. Before it could be settled, a chain of alliances would force more than 30 nations into global conflagration—and change the direction of George Budde’s life.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye,
who cheer when soldier lads march by
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know,
the hell where youth and laughter go.
—Royal Welsh Capt. S. Sassoon, “Suicide in the Trenches,” 1918
A blurry Marine registration card is all that’s left of the day George signed away his life. The young man, who apprenticed a short time with his father’s cleaning products company while attending Xavier, spotted the Marine Corps recruiting posters urging young men to be “First to Fight in France!” Reaching his own personal epiphany on Dec. 22, 1917, he opted to enlist.
Not your prototypical “war hero,” Budde was barely tall enough to make the Marines’ height cutoff. “George volunteered because most of his friends were going,” his brother, Norbert, told the Cincinnati Times-Star a half-century later. Their father likely expected a different outcome, assuming his eldest son would one day run the family firm. Older sisters Josie and Loretto, who attended Xavier’s commerce school, already worked at the company as stenographers. “I think George kind of planned to run the business when he got back,” said Norbert, who was only 12 years old when his brother shipped overseas.
From basic training at Parris Island, the elated tenderfoot wrote back to pals: “We are at work drilling almost every day. I am enjoying every minute of my life here and learning quite a few new and novel things.”
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle …
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells.
Just shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells.
—British 2nd Lt. Wilfred Owen,“Anthem for Doomed Youth,” 1918
Interwoven in the mix of George Budde’s life of blood and war is a love story. A cheerful item in a New York City newspaper reported this interlude under the headline: Arrives in Time to Bid Sweetheart Goodbye: “A romantic, cross-country chase to see her Marine sweetheart before he sailed for ‘somewhere in France’ and which, after many disappointments, had a happy conclusion when she found him on an Army transport in an Atlantic port, was the recent experience of Miss Regina M. Brown, a Cincinnati girl. Miss Brown’s fiancé is George W. Budde, a Cincinnatian in the Marine Corps. Budde was stationed in Washington and wired Miss Brown and his parents that he had been ordered to leave.”
Brown—“an attractive brunette who had grown up a few blocks from George on Crestline Avenue”—immediately hustled to the nation’s capital with George’s mother and father in tow, then traveled down to Quantico, Va. Ultimately, authorities directed the trio to the nearest Atlantic naval port. Budde, already aboard his troop ship, was granted two hours to spend with his fiancée and parents. “As the vessel steamed slowly out to sea, the girl waved her farewell. He was gone—but she had been able to say goodbye and she was happy.”
Her happiness would not last, however. Brown, a Red Cross nurse, died a month before Budde at age 21 in Ohio’s influenza epidemic.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
[Continued]
