The Letter That Told Her He Was Dead

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Imagine waiting at home from [music] any word from your husband while he's away in a war. And then the letter finally arrives, [music] but it does not say he's coming home. It says that he will never return.

[00:00:14]That is how Fritz Büsen's wife learned what happened to him.

[00:00:18]Fritz was a German soldier in the First World War serving in the fourth company Armierungsbataillon 115.

[00:00:25]He was not a frontline infantryman the way most people imagine. He was an Armierungssoldat, part of the construction and labor unit. Men like Fritz built and maintained roads, [music] trenches, defensive positions, and other works near the front.

[00:00:40]They were not always men charging into no man's land, [music] but they were still in the same war, the same mud, the same shell fire, the same danger.

[00:00:48][music] On the 14th of September, 1916, near the French village of Dancourt, Fritz Büsen was killed. He was first buried there.

[00:00:57]After his death, [music] a letter was sent to his wife. It used the formal words of the time saying that he died in faithful fulfillment of duty.

[00:01:05]But those words had much simpler truth.

[00:01:09]A husband was gone.

[00:01:10]His company commander wrote that Fritz had been respected and liked by the men around him.

[00:01:15]>> [music] >> Today, Fritz Büsen rests at the German war cemetery in Misérie.

[00:01:20]Block seven, [music] grave 1,510.

[00:01:24]Not a famous name, not a general, just one husband, one human life, one more family broken by this brutal war.