An Unlucky Man

When visiting the old family farmstead I had to go up the road a mile and pay my respects to several generations of my predecessors.  While doing so I noticed this sad sight:

Otto P. Ochsner.  Geboren (born) 1896.  Gestorben (died) 9 November 1918.  The star and the adjacent marker indicate he was a soldier.

The community he came from was almost entirely German and the wording of his tombstone suggests that was his native tongue.  He probably had a lot in common with the soldiers in the trenches on the other side of No Man's Land.  He would have had no difficulty at all walking out and talking with them, perhaps shaking their hands.

If only he had not been killed in action two days before the Armistice.