Posted on 09/26/2006 5:03:15 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
ARLINGTON, Va. - The only testament to Francis Lupo's death in a World War I battle has long been his name, etched on a French chapel wall with those of hundreds of other missing soldiers.
On Tuesday, 88 years after he was killed, the recently discovered remains of the U.S. Army private were buried with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. And by year's end, his name will be carved anew, this time on a white headstone like those marking the graves of his fellow soldiers.
Lupo is the first World War I soldier whose remains — a few fragments of bone and teeth — were recovered and identified by the Pentagon's office for POW-MIA affairs, Pentagon spokesman Larry Greer said.
About 50 people, including two representatives of the French military, attended Tuesday's ceremony. Lupo's niece, 73-year-old Rachel Kleisinger of Florence, Ky., sat in a wheelchair as a traditional gun salute — seven rifles firing three rounds — sounded and an Army bugler played taps.
Then Kleisinger — who was born after Lupo's death but knew his mother — accepted the burial flag from a U.S. soldier.
The military added an Army dress uniform and Lupo's medals: A Purple Heart and the World War I Victory Medal. The victory medal had clasps for the battles he fought in — Mont Didier-Noyon, Champagne-Marne, Aisne-Marne — before he died during an attack on German forces near Soissons, France, on July 21, 1918.
Lupo, from Cincinnati, was 23 when he was killed. A French archaeologist discovered his remains in 2003 while working on a conservation project.
It took the Army more than five months to find Kleisinger, Lupo's next of kin, and another six months to make funeral arrangements, Greer said.
Study of Lupo's remains, found with a fragment of a combat boot and a wallet embossed with his name, showed he stood about five feet tall. That is "very, very small for a soldier headed for combat," Greer said.
The fighting Lupo saw was some of the fiercest and most gruesome of the war. An anonymous extract from the diary of an officer in Lupo's unit, later reprinted in an Army history of the war, described the artillery and aerial attacks in stark terms: "Oh, how maddening are these horrible bloody sights! Can it be possible to reap such wholesale destruction and butchery in these few hours of conflict?"
Lupo was a member of Company E, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. His unit fought as part of a joint French-American attack on German forces near Soissons, in what became known as the Second Battle of the Marne. Army records say Lupo's brigade was advancing toward Chaudun, about 1.5 miles southeast of Ploisy, as the 1st Infantry's four-day attack began.
Of the 1st Infantry Division's 12,228 infantry officers and enlisted soldiers who fought in the Second Battle of the Marne, all but 3,923 were killed, wounded, taken prisoner or listed as missing, according to the Pentagon. Lupo was reported missing in action; available military records give no other details.
Lupo's name was memorialized on the list of missing soldiers inscribed on the walls of the memorial chapel at the Aisne-Marne American Military Cemetery near the village of Belleau, not far from where he was killed.
A total of 116,516 U.S. service members died in World War I; 53,402 are recorded as battle deaths, according to the Pentagon. The United States entered the war in April 1917; it ended in November 1918.
Nope. That has nothing to do with Europe or America or with arrogance. It has to do with individual intelligence. I am sorry that I have to say this.
And guess what - I have reason to.
Very unusual for any WWI Vet to say anything like that. My grandfather was also a mustard gas disabled type. He invested in land. All three of his sons served in WWII. I never heard anything like you are saying.
You assume incorrectly.
In most previous (and some subsequent) wars, your thesis would hold: those who fought bravely and cannily would live to fight another day and thus to reproduce.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the leadership was (as usual) fighting the last war, with horrific consequences in the age of machine guns, HE, and poison gas. The individuals who would have been "selected" for their sterling qualities in a more traditional war were overridden by the stupidity of the brass hats, most particularly French, Haig, Foch, and Joffre.
Darwinist theories were submerged in total war and total slaughter. The statistics, while incomplete, do indicate a noticeable falling-off in physical size and strength. I don't know about the IQ issue, Binet invented the concept just before the war, so I don't know what kind of a baseline they had. Probably just anecdotal, but the physical statistics are easy to find. I'm most familiar with Britain, and I know that the recruiters in WWII were disturbed enough by the falling-off in health and strength to take note of it.
BTW, rather than deride the professor, you might give this some serious consideration. I majored in history with a concentration in military history, and he has a point.
P.S., the Swiss stayed out of it, thus proving once again their essential good sense.
I will be at Arlington Cemetery this week.
I will look for the grave marker and leave flowers from Free Republic.
Why, because you can't write complete English sentences?
Wow, your ignorance on this subject takes my breathe away. You remind me of that character, Cliff, from Cheers.
And a whole generation of Britons. I think the Great War damaged the British psyche beyond repair. They're still good chaps and all -- for the most part -- but their genes have mutated to include a strain of radical socialism that will never be expunged.
Good friend of my dad's (now gone to glory) was a Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain. His whole family - wife and children - were killed in the Blitz. He emigrated and remarried to an American girl, and had a second family of American sons to carry on his remarkable courage and grace.
Our gain was England's loss.
Nope. You forgot that only those, who were "dispensable" were send into those sections were no survival was possible. The men used for "suicide squads" or "Himmelfahrtskommandos" (in German) were usually not the elite. A simple example: The most intellectual men (the officers) in a war are always in safe places behind the lines because they are needed for better purposes than direct hostilities.
Here are some color (yes, color!) photos of a French unit and the surrounding area in WWI.
Artillery does not respect good genes.
Sorry. English is not my mother language and I am really not that good in it. Therefore I am not that eloquent if I use your language as I would be using German or French.
Anyway I doesn't matter. You understood very well what I wanted to say.
:-)
Not to minimize in any way the staggering, unbelievable carnage of WWI, but the Eastern Front in WWII is the record-holder for most savage and unfathomable casualties, probably approaching 30 million, with numerous entire town, villages, and even cities wiped out:
"The Eastern Front was by far the largest and bloodiest theatre of World War II. It is generally accepted as being the most costly conflict in human history with between 25-30 million dead as a result. It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined. The Eastern Front resulted in staggering losses and disregard for human life...."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)
That is indeed true. Nevertheless most soldiers were killed while serving in the infantry.
Rest in peace, soldier. God bless you for your sacrifice.
Everybody went into the meat grinder, including the sons of nobility and Scottish farmers. And the "intellectuals" - ever heard of Brooke, Grenfell, Owen, Rosenberg, Sorley, Thomas?
And from what I've read of Jünger, Remarque, and other German writers, that doesn't appear to be the case on the other side, either.
Welcome home brother, RIP
Nous Resterons La
I actually did know an Austrian ski-troop veteran (he was already in when Hitler assassinated Dollfuss and took over) who was on the last plane out of Stalingrad (he was shot in the knee - really a lucky blighty wound for him.) He didn't care for the Russians much.
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