Hi there,
I am in the midst of a wild goose chase in terms of ancestry. There has been a story floating around my family about an Uncle Rumon Henik (sp?). The stroy goes that he saved an American general in some capactiy from a gas attack in France during WW1 and, because of that, was "invited" to be a naturalized citizen along with the rest of his immediate family. This is the story I was told as to how the Henik family came over from Poland.
Is this something that is even feasible? Was this type of warfare happening in France at the time?
I am not 100% sure this individual was serving as an American Soldier but I am assuming he was. My grandfather is adamant that his Uncle was a war hero of some sort and remembers meeting him.
Also, any help finding past soldiers apart from Ancestry.com or any knowlegde of the Henik/Hennick surname would be a really great bonus. I keep coming up as largely Polish as the stories suggest but am not finding any info tying the Hennick name (or its variations) to Poland.
Thank you guys for all you do!
This sounds unlikely, however, there may be a nugget of truth in it. During WWI, a foreign national who fought for the U.S. Armed Forces could waive the waiting period to becoming a U.S. citizen. Back then, you had to be a U.S. resident for five years before starting the citizenship process. So for foreign national soldiers, they could start the process immediately as soon as they returned from the war. This led to some soldiers being granted citizenship the same day they applied.
So possibly, the general could put a word in to give his citizenship application priority over others. But more than likely, he was already qualified for citizenship anyway and all the general did was cut some of the wait time out of processing the application.
This wasn't only confined to WWI. The same things happened during the Civil War and thousands of Canadians fought on the side of Union and were granted U.S. citizenship with the residency requirement waived once they completed their war service.
PS: You might want to cross-post this in r/genealogy because they will have more experience with questions like this.