Gunther Pluschow: Airmen, Escaper and Explorer by Anton Rippon

Author:Anton Rippon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS027090
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781844685240
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2010-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

As 1914 drew to a close, the United States of America was still neutral. Two weeks after war had been declared between Britain and Germany, the American president, Woodrow Wilson, addressed Congress and made public US policy: despite the fact that the people of the United States were drawn from many nations, especially the nations now at war, the US must be neutral in fact as well as in name. Wilson told Congress: ‘We must be impartial in thought, as well as action, must put a curb upon our sentiments, as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.’

America certainly had its own distractions, not least the ongoing revolution in Mexico that, in April, had seen American marines and sailors occupy the port of Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico. And in late June, when newspapers covered the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the headlines that caused greater interest were those reporting Suffragettes marching on the Capitol in Washington to demand voting rights for women. On a lighter note, at the beginning of December a 26-year-old Jewish American composer and lyricist who went by the name of Irving Berlin opened his first musical, Watch Your Step, on Broadway. It gave the world songs like ‘Play a Simple Melody’ and it was music and entertainment that gave Gunther Plüschow his first taste of life in the United States.

Two days after Plüschow arrived was New Year’s Eve and he was invited to spend the occasion at one of San Francisco’s swankiest nightclubs. It was an irony that, while he had expected to be arrested the moment he landed, here he was experiencing one of the most enjoyable evenings of his life with music, dancing and beautiful women. Even the officials at the German consulate were surprised at the freedom that this celebrated combatant from a warring nation was being allowed.

And that was the point: Plüschow was still a member of the Imperial German Navy and his country was still at war. He needed to get home. On 2 January 1915, he climbed aboard a train and left San Francisco behind him. His fellow passengers included another German officer – probably the one who had also arrived on the Mongolia – and several German civilians who had travelled on the ship. It was a journey that opened up many of the natural wonders of the continent, not least the Grand Canyon where Plüschow gazed in awe at Nature’s might, but its purpose was to lead him back to Germany. The train steamed on through deep canyons and alongside the Colorado River in the heart of the Rockies before descending to Denver, then through the farmlands of Iowa before arriving in Chicago. There, Plüschow left the train and caught another that would take him south-east, to Virginia where he had arranged to meet an old friend.

The advice he received there was to travel to New York where there would be the best possible chance of getting aboard a ship bound for Europe.

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