On a Friday afternoon in June, 1983, my cousin Hans picked me up and drove me to a rendezvous with my grandfather's past.

My Nana had arranged this meeting after months of asking me when would have been a good time. I never gave her an answer, so she answered for me.

Hans was a cousin insofar as we're related somehow, and that's the word you fall back on when there isn't a more precise way to describe the relationship. He was at least 20 years older than me and had a daughter my age. I think he was the son or son-in-law of one of my grandfather's brothers.

He'd come to the United States at least once when I was much younger, and the only thing I could recall about the visit was being fascinated with his rented car's sunroof. So, it made sense when he picked me up in a sporty red Mercedes convertible with the top down.

We hit a few minutes of light rain as we sped down the Autobahn, and while Hans joked about "German Summer," I was enthralled by the green countryside that framed the smooth, wide, highway. This was the first time I'd traveled more than a few miles away from Giessen without a uniform and a 2 1/2 ton truck, and my first visit to the village where my father had been born.

We rolled into Liedolsheim in the evening, had a quiet home-cooked meal, and I slept in a private bedroom for the first time in many months.

On Saturday, Hans took me around town to meet various relatives and friends of the family, introducing me as the "cousin from America" and I shook hands with an array of strangers and heard how I was "unmistakably a Göbelbecker." Other than finding the local accents vaguely comforting, I missed the bar scene in Gießen.

The day had three highlights, though.

First, I finally got to see this church. Pictures of it always seemed nearby when I was a kid, and seeing its tower looming down the street triggered a flood of memories.

Nearby was another memory I didn't know I had; the village's World War I memorial, which I somehow knew was there, possibly from a forgotten photo album.

There's about 80 names on that plaque, a serious toll for a small farming village.

Finally, as we walked down one of Liedolsheim's main streets, I saw a storefront for "Erich Göbelbecker, Elektromeister" and pointed out that my role fixing radars in the Army was related to that. I was pointedly told that Erich wasn't related to us. I wondered what ancient feud led to that assertion. Maybe an argument over a cow?

That evening, Hans told me he was having friends over for drinks. I braced myself for a boring evening, was grateful I had something to read, and mentally rehearsed excuses in German for going to bed early.

But that was before I learned I had a secret identity.

The men arrived, and they were exactly what I expected; older guys that all seemed nice enough, but not the age group I was accustomed to sharing a beer with.

My introduction morphed from the nondescript "cousin from America" to the very specific "Emil's grandson." I was shocked at first, because Emil is my father's older brother. Did Hans forget who I was? Then I remembered that my grandfather was Emil, too.

Nothing could have prepared me for the welcome I received.

"Your grandfather stood up to the Nazis!" They exclaimed, and told me a story.

Because of his actions at the Somme, my grandfather returned home a hero.

By the mid-1920s, after Hitler’s brief stint in jail, the Nazis were on the rise and when they tried to establish a political presence in Liedolsheim, my grandfather opposed them. According to Hans’ friends, his word carried a lot of weight and they were angry when he didn’t just refuse to endorsement them, but condemned him.

Eventually the conflict led to an attempt on my grandfather’s life, and a riot at the Wirtschaft Zum Ochsen, the village inn and gathering place.

I hadn't planned on drinking that night, but this conversation sent me right to a glass of Asbach Uralt.

I'd heard a variation of this story once before. My father told it to me, very briefly, and in very general terms, when I was about 16 years old. It hadn't really made a big impression, for a few reasons.

The main one being it was just too fantastical. Being a snotty, cynical, teenager, I thought that maybe my grandfather had a few disagreements with a couple of Nazis before he left for the U.S, but that he'd primarily left because of the economic devastation Germany suffered after losing the war. I'd heard about that many times before, more often than any talk of him being a hero.

It was hard to process that the shy, quiet, little man I knew as my grandfather, the one who refused to talk about his time in the war, was a real, live profile in courage - and there was no way that I could have one of them in my family, anyway. That only happened in stories, not in real life.

But then a half dozen perfect strangers welcomed me with handshakes, hugs, and song—yes, song— because I was Emil’s grandson. It wasn’t just true, it was still remembered and celebrated by complete strangers nearly 4000 miles away.

It would be years before I was compelled to follow up on this story, so what I didn't know was how violent things had become in sleepy little Liedolsheim (and the rest of the country) in the 1920s, and why he and my grandmother never talk about why they came to the United States.

The Origins of the Great War of the World…