War and Remembrance : All’s Quiet but Never Forgotten as County’s WWI Vets Answer Reveille to Tell How Deadly It Was Over There

Samuel Silberling, Fred Hummer and Cecil Kepler were in high school 75 years ago this month as Europe’s powers plunged into the Great War.

They, like others, read the news on June 28, 1914, of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand’s assassination, which struck a nerve among Europe’s most powerful nations.

By August, the intricate system of alliances and crosscurrents of nationalism and aggression helped pull Germany, Russia, Britain and France into the war.

The three students, who are among 830 veterans of the Great War who live in Orange County, had little idea that these guns of August would lead to mass U.S. involvement, starting in 1917. One of President Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 reelection pledges was to keep the United States out.

Many of the veterans are now in their 90s, and they have survived most of their wartime buddies. At Seal Beach’s Leisure World retirement community, the Veterans of World War I post disbanded five years ago. A Costa Mesa post dissolved last year.

For those who remain, the memories of active duty are still vivid. Silberling, Hummer and Kepler remember their anxiety when they volunteered. They easily recall both their awe of their new experience and their horror of battle.

“World War I was the worst war we had,” Silberling said. “It was hand-to-hand fighting. It was a very person-to-person war, and we weren’t prepared for it.”

He recalled seeing soldiers lying in the trenches either wounded or dead, and the Germans and Allies going at each other with clubs and bayonets.

Silberling, 88, had been in a radio school in New York when the war broke out. He thought this would be a great way to put what he learned into practice. So at 17, he enlisted in the coastal artillery. Although he was not old enough to join, communications experts were in such demand that officials turned the other way when his age was questioned, he said.

“I lied about my age,” said Silberling, who lives at Leisure World in Seal Beach. “When the war broke out, they didn’t have enough radio and telephone operators. That’s why these guys closed their eyes to my age.”

When his mother, who had a boardinghouse on Coney Island, found out that he had enlisted, she petitioned a state senator to get him out because he was too young and had not gotten her permission. Hearing this, Silberling took quick action.

“I told the commander the situation,” he said. “He told me that there was a ship that was to leave for France the next day. The next morning, I was sailing.”

In France, he went right to the front lines, where, as acting communications officer, he witnessed three major engagements. He carried his equipment through the trenches, dug hollow spaces and operated the equipment from there.

“My whole object was to get near the trenches but in a corner where I would not be hit,” he said. “They couldn’t replace me that easily.”

He said he considers himself lucky to have survived the war and made it this far. In France, he had several close calls.

One time, just after he walked away once, a bomb went off in his trench. “I said, ‘Geez, if I was still there that minute, I would be gone.’

“I had lucky breaks,” he said. “It was weird how lucky I was.”

In another close call, he and a friend got caught in mustard gas, a poison that had extremely irritating, blistering and disabling effects. They survived with their oxygen masks.

“I got the mask on just in time,” he said. “My friend, Earl McKinney, got some of the gas. He suffered for that damn gas for a long time.”

Silberling was in France’s Argonne Forest for about 10 days during the Meuse-Argonne offensive. About 1.2 million Americans fought in the final battle, which took place over the last 47 days of the war. One of every 10 was killed or wounded.

“The grounds were wet all the time,” he said. “My feet swelled up like a balloon. They had to cut my shoe off, and my socks had disintegrated.”

At Leisure World, Silberling still gets in rounds of golf. In the early 1970s, he had a bit part in “The Godfather.”

For Fred Hummer, 89, of Fountain Valley, the war was fought on the home front. He became a bugler for the 22nd Infantry, playing and serving at the White House, the Capitol and the Statue of Liberty.

Hummer still plays the same 10-inch-long bugle that he used to wake up the members of his company each morning during the war.

“It was funny when I was discharged,” Hummer said. “The sergeant says to me, ‘Give me your side arm, but keep the bugle.’ ”

Twice a month, he plays bugle calls for the American Legion, which he joined in 1919 as a charter member. And, after he does his 10 push-ups, he still practices the horn every day.

One of his most vivid memories of wartime is guarding a German spy who had plotted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. He guarded the spy on the train from New York to Trenton as he was being taken to a prison.

“He went to the bathroom,” he said. “After a while, the guard who was nearest to the door heard a crashing sound. . . . They kicked the door in, and he was just about out the window and off the train. The sergeant shot him.”

Hummer rose each morning at 6 a.m. to blow the wake-up call--which did not make him too popular with the soldiers.

“They’d like to shoot me,” he said. “They wanted to throw everything at me. The buglers would have to find their own quarters to sleep. Otherwise they’d like to steal it.

“It reminds me of that song, ‘Someday I’d Like to Murder the Bugler.’ ”

Cecil Kepler, 91, of Orange faced a similar situation. At the end of the war, he was a bugler on the front in Europe, waking soldiers at 5 a.m.

“They’d give me trouble,” he said. “I got to the point where I’d just turn over their cots and take off.”

Although he served in France during the final months of the war, it was during a lull in fighting, so he saw no action. For Kepler, some of his worst memories were of crossing the Atlantic. On his ship, one of his buddies caught influenza and died.

“I had to blow taps for him,” he said. “They had to bury him at sea.”

Later, as they were several days from Europe, a German U-boat surfaced. After a brief engagement, a gunner on their ship sank the submarine with a direct hit.

Kepler, who with his wife, Eula, 86, volunteers once each week at the Veterans Hospital in Long Beach, still recalls with precision the French towns his company traveled through. He remembers the end of the war especially well.

“At the distance we saw cars going by on the road with a little American flag on the fender,” he said. “We knew something was going on, because that was not allowed. The next day they came and said, ‘We’ve signed an armistice.’ But we didn’t know what an armistice was.”

The war was over. He was discharged several months later. For many of his fellow servicemen, it came too late.

“We got mustered out some day in May, 1919,” he said. “But Prohibition had started the night before.”

COUNTY VETERANS

Number WORLD WAR I Veterans in Orange County 830 Nationwide 114,000 Total servicemen in war 4,744,000 WORLD WAR II Veterans in Orange County 76,610 Nationwide 9,440,000 Total servicemen in war 16,535,000 KOREAN WAR Veterans in Orange County 51,340 Nationwide 4,960,000 Total servicemen in war 6,807,000 VIETNAM WAR Veterans in Orange County 80,260 Nationwide 8,277,000 Total servicemen in war 9,200,000

Figures reflect number of servicemen, regardless of where they served, at the time of the war.

Source: Veterans Administration, January , 1989