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Might-Have-Been. Krueger was born to military tradition older than the U.S. But for the early death of his father, a Prussian colonel, he might today be commanding an army under Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. His widowed mother brought her children, including eight-year-old Walter, from Flatow in Prussia to the U.S. to be near an uncle in St. Louis. After she remarried, the family settled in Madison, Ind. Walter's adolescent ambition was to be a naval officer; his mother would not let him apply for appointment to Annapolis. "She was afraid for me on the water," he explains now, at the far side of the world's greatest ocean.
After the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Krueger and his fellow high-school students went over to Fort Thomas, Ky. to watch the 6th Infantry drill. The military bug bit them. On June 17, Walter Krueger enlisted; he reached Santiago, Cuba a few weeks after the Battle of San Juan Hill. Mustered out of the volunteers in February 1899, he still was not dedicated to the military life. By now he wanted to be a civil engineer. But many of his comrades were re-enlisting for service in the Philippines. After four months, Krueger was back in the army as a private. Soon he was on his way to fight Emilio Aguinaldo's Insurrectos.
Sergeant's Surprise. With Company M of the 12th Infantry, Private Krueger took part in a 25-mile advance from Angeles to Tarlac, Aguinaldo's capital. But Aguinaldo had fled, and the 12th pursued him vainly all the way through Luzon's central plain to Dagupan on Lingayen Gulf. To the Madison Courier Krueger wrote excellent descriptions of the campaign, explaining: "Undoubtedly you see a good deal written about . . . the Philippines, but I thought, although many professors may have their theories about these islands, 'a fool here knows more than six wise men at home.' "
One day he was asked to take the examination for a commission. In his own words: "I demurred. I still had no idea of making the army a career. But I figured that as long as I was in I might as well get the best, however little that might be." He thought he had "flunked gloriously": but on July 1, 1901, Sergeant Krueger received his commission as a second lieutenant. Then he began to live & breathe army. He read every military textbook he could find: strategy, tactics, infantry operations, cavalry, artillery, the techniques of river crossings.
As he later told a gathering of West Pointers: "I owe West Point a great debt of gratitude. The realization that its graduates had much that I did not has spurred me to acquire what I lacked. . . . West Point has probably done more for me than it has for many of you." Both his sons owe their debt direct to West Point: Colonel James Norvell Krueger ('26), recently returned from Northern Ireland, and Colonel Walter Krueger Jr. ('31), at Camp Bowie, Tex.