IN MEMORY OF NILE

When the First World War began, my mother was not yet two years old. When it ended, she was six. Her father and both his brothers had enlisted in the Marines during this war. Only one served outside the US, her father’s younger brother Nile.

Though she never was sure where exactly he served, my mother fondly remembered Nile calling her his “little chiquita,” a term he had learned while he was away. I have since learned he was stationed as a lowly orderly serving in the officers’ mess in Cuba.  Nile died in 1919 not long after the war ended, but not of injuries.

If it surprises you that Cuba figured in the strategies of the First World War, you are like me. Neutral for much of the war, their Red Cross served on the European battlefront for some time. Finally after a many futile protests sent to the German government about the continued indiscriminate sinking of the ships of non-combatant countries by German submarines, the island nation finally declared war April 7, 1917

Cuba had diseases for which a young man from West Virginia was unprepared. Nile contracted a recurring fever while there which plagued the days of his return home after the war. Before the war Nile often performed as a singer at local events. He sang everywhere. At home he sang along with the performers on the radio and would often sing the arias of opera from the records in the family’s collection.

One Friday, he was singing just for fun on a street corner. A car passed near carrying a talent scout from the New York Metropolitan Opera on his way to Pittsburgh. He stopped to give Nile his card and set up an audition for the following Monday. It was just three days away, but it was an appointment Nile could not keep, for on Saturday his fever returned and he lost this last battle.