On the hillside over looking it....is a cemetery. At some prominent part of it....is the war memorial for those of the village who went off, and didn't come back.
Few Americans ever think over things like this. From this small village....as wars came in the early 1800s on....it required some of the men to go off. Up until 1914....Germany tended to win every war they got into. So these memorials were a place where the vets would meet and remember those of friends and neighbors who didn't make it back.
This picture to the left....is the 1870-1871 war....with Denmark. Around twenty local guys didn't make it back. Their names are inscribed on the bottom of the memorial.
This memorial to the right? It's for World War I. Roughly twenty-five of them didn't make it back. From the bottom picture? These are the guys who died in World War II....who were brought back and buried in the cemetery. There's another forty-odd guys who didn't get brought back, or simply disappeared. They have a bigger memorial at the end of this section of the cemetery.
World War II claimed a high number of the village's men.
There are a fair number that got drafted up in the last twelve months of the war....with little training....and simply told to pick up a gun, toss on a uniform, and do what you can.
Up until World War I.....there is this prospective of the German military....that they can't be defeated. For a hundred years....they fought various battles against the Hapsburgs, the French (several times), the Danes, and the Russians. They generally came out ahead, and the war dead was an acceptable thing. World War I and II....probably changed that prospective.
I would imagine the village is forever affected by this casualty count, as decades roll by.
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