The First Yank and Harley-Davidson to Enter Germany
Every once in a while, an old motorcycle photograph turns out to carry more story than the caption can hold. This World War I image of a Harley-Davidson rider in Europe is one of those photographs. For years it circulated with a simple handwritten identification: “The first Yank and Harley-Davidson to enter Germany. 11/12/18.”
The rider was Roy C. Holtz of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, a World War I motorcycle dispatch rider connected with the 107th Field Signal Battalion of the 32nd “Red Arrow” Division. His story was later retold in the February 1944 issue of The Enthusiast, Harley-Davidson’s own magazine, after Holtz himself recognized the photograph in an earlier issue and visited the magazine office in Milwaukee.
Holtz’s story belongs to the first generation of American motorcycle dispatch riders, when the Army was still learning what a fast, rugged motorcycle could do on broken roads and shifting fronts. The service had been testing that idea for years, from early experiments with motorcycles to wartime units that treated the motorcycle as a practical military vehicle, but Holtz’s photograph gave that history a single unforgettable face.
The Famous Photograph
The photograph first reached a wider Harley-Davidson audience when it appeared in the June 1943 issue of The Enthusiast. It was printed with the striking handwritten caption identifying the rider as the first American and Harley-Davidson to enter Germany on November 12, 1918.
That caption was the hook, but the identity of the rider was what made the story. Not long after the photograph appeared, a quiet visitor came into The Enthusiast office and asked for a couple of extra copies of the June issue. He explained that a friend had seen his picture in the magazine. When he opened the issue to the photograph, he pointed to the man on the Harley-Davidson and identified himself as the rider.
His name was Roy Holtz. He lived in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and during the war he had ridden dispatch on a Harley-Davidson in France and Belgium. To the magazine staff, the photo looked like a famous piece of Harley-Davidson war history. To Holtz, it was simply a picture from a rough stretch of service that he had not thought much about until someone else brought it back to him.
Roy Holtz and the Enthusiast Rediscovery
According to the February 1944 Enthusiast account, Holtz did not walk into the office acting like a celebrity. He was described as a sturdy, weather-beaten man with thinning sandy hair, almost embarrassed to be asking for extra copies. The magazine staff had to press him for details before the full story came out.
Holtz remembered that the photograph had appeared in American newspapers and magazines during the war. An aunt mailed him a copy while he was still overseas in Belgium. Later, some of his buddies found the photographer in Spa, Belgium, and bought extra prints for the men connected with the scene.
The photograph alone was good. The story behind it was better. Holtz had been captured just before the Armistice, released after the fighting ended, and then rode back into the confusion of the closing days of the war on his Harley-Davidson.
Captured Before the Armistice
On the night of November 8, 1918, Corporal Holtz and his outfit were in northern Belgium near Spa. The German army was falling back, American forces were pushing toward the border, and rumors were already spreading that peace had been declared. The rumor was wrong.
Late that night, Holtz was ordered to take his captain out on a mission. The weather had been miserable. Rain had soaked the roads for days, and the shell-torn route was thick with mud. Holtz rode the Harley-Davidson with his captain in the sidecar, but as they slid along in the dark, Holtz became convinced they were headed the wrong way.
He knew enough of the country to suspect they were riding toward the German lines. The captain disagreed, first calmly and then more sharply. Holtz kept pushing the point as the motorcycle worked through the bad roads, but orders were orders and the mission continued.
Eventually they came over a rise and saw a light below them in an old farmhouse. The captain ordered Holtz to go inside and ask for directions. Wet, irritated, and already worried about where they were, Holtz pounded on the door and stepped in out of the rain.
Inside the room sat a group of German officers. The original account identifies them as officers of the Fifth Bavarian Division. Holtz and his captain had ridden straight into enemy divisional headquarters.
Holtz was ordered to call in the captain. The moment gave him at least a small bit of satisfaction. Instead of calling formally for his superior officer, he called out for “Sam” to come in. When the captain entered and saw the German uniforms, both men knew the report of peace had been dangerously false.
Released After the War Ended
A German general soon came into the room and called for an interpreter. Holtz spoke up in German and told him that would not be necessary. That surprised the officers, and the general took Holtz into a side room for questioning.
The interview began with schnapps. Holtz suspected the general was either trying to poison him or loosen his tongue. Once he saw the general drink from his own glass, Holtz drank too. More drinks followed, while the general tried to get information about American positions and strength. Holtz did not give him what he wanted.
The two Americans were then sent on to German general headquarters. The German captain assigned to accompany them climbed onto the hard luggage carrier behind the saddle of the Harley-Davidson. Holtz had not forgotten the capture, and when the German officer began complaining about the miserable perch, Holtz found every bump and hole in the road that he could.
At headquarters in Spa, Holtz and his captain were questioned again and then placed in jail. They remained there until November 11. Late that morning a guard told them the war was over. Once that was confirmed, the Germans returned Holtz’s automatic pistol and his Harley-Davidson, and the captain recovered his own belongings.
The Belgian Village and the Ride Back
Holtz and the captain still had to find their way back to their outfit, which they estimated was fifty or sixty miles away. Their company had no idea where they were. In the last days of the war, men being reported missing was common enough that almost anything could have happened.
Holtz rode the Harley-Davidson hard over the wrecked roads, trying to get back before their unit moved. At one point they missed the right road and ended up in a small Belgian village. They went to the village priest for directions.
The priest’s reaction turned an accidental stop into one of the most vivid parts of the story. The two Americans were apparently the first American soldiers the village had seen, and the priest was so excited that he ordered the church bells rung for an hour. Villagers poured in to see them.
The reception was overwhelming. According to Holtz’s account, the townspeople greeted the Americans as signs of the army that was coming to free them. The priest gave them affidavits stating that they were the first Americans to reach the village, and then gave them beds in the parish house, even though they were still carrying all the dirt, grime, and cooties of soldiers who had just come out of the war.
The next day, after repeated farewells and better directions, Holtz and the captain set out again. Not long afterward, the Harley-Davidson came to a stop in front of their own headquarters. They had arrived just in time. Their outfit was preparing to move forward.
Crossing Into Germany
On November 12, 1918, the day after the Armistice, Holtz crossed into Germany on the Harley-Davidson. That is the date attached to the famous caption and the reason the photograph became one of the most repeated Harley-Davidson images from the end of World War I.
Later summaries of the story support Holtz’s place in Harley-Davidson and American military motorcycle history, while also adding some nuance to the exact geography of those first crossings and later movement into Germany proper. The important point for this photograph is that Holtz’s Harley-Davidson was tied to the first American movement across the German border immediately after the Armistice, and that the November 12 caption became the way the story was remembered.
Holtz did not cross only once. In the days that followed, he rode back and forth across the border many times. Dispatch riders were part of the communication network that kept units connected as the front dissolved into occupation duty, road movement, and reorganization.
What Harley Was Holtz Riding?
The original story and photograph identify the machine only as a Harley-Davidson. That is as far as the evidence in the caption goes, so the exact model should not be overstated. Based on the period and the types of machines Harley-Davidson supplied for American military service, Holtz was likely riding a 1917–1918 Harley-Davidson Model 17-series military twin, often described in modern summaries as a Model 17F or 17J.
Those wartime Harley-Davidsons were 61 cubic inch F-head V-twins, with an overhead intake valve and side exhaust valve layout, paired with a three-speed transmission. Many were used with sidecars for dispatch, reconnaissance, and other military work. They were not modern motorcycles by later standards, but for a dispatch rider working over muddy, broken, shell-damaged roads, reliability mattered more than elegance.
Holtz’s own praise for the machine fits that context. The motorcycle had carried him through France and Belgium, through rain and mud, into captivity, back out again, and finally across the German border in the closing hours of the war.
Holtz, His Harley, and the Army of Occupation
Holtz spent eight months with the Army of Occupation in Germany and twenty months overseas in all. During that time, he and his Harley-Davidson carried dispatches for American troops as they advanced through France and Belgium and then settled into the occupation period.
The February 1944 Enthusiast story also noted that Holtz visited the factory with his brother Ezra. Ezra Holtz had also served overseas in World War I and had worked for a time on Army Harley-Davidsons. By the time the story was published, the brothers were in the electrical contracting business and had recently completed a wiring job at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin.
That final detail gives the story a fitting shape. A photograph made in the chaos after World War I found its rider again during another world war, when new military motorcycles were leaving Milwaukee and the men who had ridden the earlier Army machines were old enough to be remembered as veterans of a previous generation.
The image survived because of the caption. The story survived because Holtz walked into The Enthusiast office and said, in effect, that the rider in the picture was him.