Retyped for clarity on November 6, 1999 by Joseph Betters
Received from John Johnson at the 1999 Vance Reunion.

From an unknown newspaper article.

Coast Guardsman Finds Kin on U-Boat

When Coast Guardsman Charles Sebastian Kogler, 18, of Donora, Pa., youngest member of the prize crew which brought in the U-873, first enemy submarine to surrender to American forces in the Atlantic, boarded the undersea raider, he discovered a cousin among the German crew.

Kogler, who speaks a little German, after learning that Rudolf Beck, 23, one of the prisoners, was his third or fourth cousin, used the kinship to obtain information about the U-boat's activities.

Before fellow prisoners warned him to be quiet, Beck informed Kogler that the U-873 had been out of Norway since Feb. 1, and that she had sunk a tanker off Newfoundland two weeks before receiving surrender orders by radio.

Beck, an electrician and veteran of five years in the German navy, had been a patient of Kogler's uncle, a physician in Hannover.

Kogler reported his cousin expressed a wish to live in America, but, "like all the rest of the Germans," had an idea he would return to Germany to fight the Russians.

Kogler said Beck had no idea of the devastation in Germany or the finality of defeat imposed on his homeland.

The young Coast Guardsman has two brothers in the U. S. Army.

Return to Stories TOC