Just a little cognitive dissonance looking at WWI photos in color! (Do these guys look French, or what?)
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.
Thank you.
Welcome home brother. My grandfather and greatgrandfather on my mother's side both fought for Canada in WW I. Both lied about their ages to enlist. The greatgrandfather was KIA. My grandfather was shot, gassed and suffered severe concussion. He was left for dead in no man's land at Lander's Field for 3 days. When they went to bury the dead, someone noticed he was still breathing and was eventually evacuated to England. Semper Fi.
Wow! What a story. Such silent courage. And you're right: grace.
Under your logic, the Jews deserved the holocaust. They weren't smart enough to avoid it.
Simplistic, but despicable, reasoning.
(Off topic - I had the privilege to know the late Ernst Jünger personally.)
I do not deny that many very capable men vanished during the world wars, but we were not talking about individual fate, we were talking about genetic pools, biological selection and last but not least about Darwinism. Therefore you have to focus on those who survived and who rebuilded Europe. If we stick to the moronic argumentation of that so called "history professor" from our friend from Texas, they all would be biological junk.
This is complete nonsense since it is rather the other way around. Just two arguments to give proof to my statement:
-For millitarists: After 1918 the SS, that was for sure a real "elite"-troop in millitary regard would not have been possible, if all "alpha-males" would have been wiped out between 1914 - 1918. (Just to put things straight: I hate the SS more than anything else but they were for sure "good" soldiers.)
-For pacifists: After 1945 the breathtaking rebuilding would not have been possible with a genetic degenerated populace.
Love it or hate it: Darwinism (although it is awfully cruesome) works and the European gene pool was cleaned through terrible selection in a genetically "positive" way.
I have a relative killed in WWI but don't know anything about him Is there an official registry I can go to to look him up?
So many gave so much. My great-grandfather survived the war. I wonder what the world would be like today if WWI had turned out differently. We are, now, so far removed from it that I don't think we can imagine the difference.
Thank you so much for that link....really enjoying it!
Thank you for the link. I'm not sure if I've ever seen color pics of WWI. At first, I thought the pic you posted was of modern reinactors.
The funny thing is that American birth rates are also declining since many years:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aabirthrate.htm
It is indeed true that the European population development is negative, but America is following closely. Personally I do not think that this has anything to do with genepools but with female emancipation. As far as I know your women do not differ that much in this issue with ours.
Beside of this your racist blahblah about Muslim genetic degeneration (YOU are not speaking about their ridicolous religion but about their semitic and hamitic blood) does not impress me much. Racial mixture is not bad - the best example for this thesis are the US.
It is funny to me that you call us cowardice since western Europe is simply following its own interests (if we talk about Iraq) that sometimes differ from those of America. Our politicians and populace did not see the dictator in Iraq as a real threat. On the other hand we helped you in Afghanistan as good as possible since there we saw a real danger and we understood your fierce reaction after 9/11. There are large European contigents there just because we wanted to help America as a friend and stand by its side. We have for sure no other interests in this godforsaken place.
Therefore: You should not insult your friends who help you because they follow their own interests sometimes.
I don't always go up there, I will make a point to go this time. My husband is there in the columbarium so I can drive to the areas I wish to visit.
Do you have family or friends there too?
Most state archives maintain a veteran's record service, with enlistment records, military service questionnaires, and pension records. There is probably also some War Department info available from the U.S.
I'm most familiar with Civil War records in GA, AL, and SC, because I wrote my thesis on that topic, but most states have similar collections of records pertaining to all wars in which the U.S. was involved. The Feds hold even the old stuff pretty close, it's hard to get U.S. service records directly without a SF 180 (hello, John Kerry!) even for WWI.
Try the information desk at the appropriate state archives.
What was Jünger like? His book is very good.
Just a little cognitive dissonance looking at WWI photos in color! (Do these guys look French, or what?)
Very simple: A really outstanding man. :-)
Which bood have you read? He wrote quite a few.
His memoirs as a junior officer at the front.
what state was he from? what unit did he serve with?
here is a link , may be something there, not sure.
http://www.usigs.org/library/military/links/
This is the grave of the Marquis De Lafayette, taken on July 13, 1917.
Is this the first ever anti-aircraft artillery?
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