I am currently reading Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild, and I came across a Belgian military leader named Eugen Rommel. When I looked up whether he was related to Erwin Rommel, I discovered Erwin's middle name was Eugen. Is this a coincidence, or are they related? How common have military lineages like that been? Is it out of the ordinary that an ancestor, or descendant, would have a leadership position in a foreign military?
While it was certainly possible that members of the same family would be in the military service in different countries, in Rommel's lineage there is no mention of this guy. Of course he could be a distant relative, but Rommel's immediate family you can look up here