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.
BS
Nice, logical refutation.
Of course, that gene pool started with the liability that everyone with an IQ higher than their hat size emmigrated to the US.
Take your genetic superiorty nonsense somewhere else.
"War is a perfect selection. "
That is the dumbest thing guised as intelligence I've ever read.
Like Einstein, genius?
America got the go-getters - the people with enough gumption to better their lives through hard work. Which is why we have low unemployment and strong economic growth to this day. What is the unemployment in France? Germany? What is your annual GDP growth?
You mean poor trash like the men who beat Euro arse in the Revolutionary War and wrote the Constitution?
You might want to quit digging that hole deeper.
The ragtag American Revolutionary Army had driven Corwallis all the way to Yorktown. The French simply blocked his escape.
I love the whine of euro-weenies in the morning. It sounds like ... victory.
To many friends......
I am sorry...there is nothing more to say.
I am going to the WALL this week too. I still have the bracelets from the POW-MIA promotions in those years. This is the only place I remain very sad. Arlington is such a beautiful place and the scenery of DC is unparalleled.
I often enjoyed the walk around the entire WALL, Korean and then lately the WWII memorial, ending back at the Lincoln Memorial....now I have to "roll" there and that is a long way to take my wheelchair. Parking is very limited in areas that I could walk.
I think it's a Hotchkiss. Good thing it's not a Chauchat, it wouldn't work.
The French were not so much helping the Americans as protecting French interests in the Antilles (most of which they had lost in the Seven Years' War) . . . and trying to steal stuff from the Dutch (e.g. St. Eustatius) while fighting the British. The American Revolution was simply a side act in a larger global three-way sparring match between the Brits, French, and Spanish, and the French were not so much helping the Americans as tweaking the British lion's tail.
Other than showing up to stand in review while the Brits surrendered at Yorktown, the only mainland action of any consequence the French saw was the failed attempt to retake Savannah from the British in 1779. The only incident of note there was that Count Pulaski was killed.
Now it is quite true that there were notable European military advisers who assisted the Continental Army and the volunteers and militia, e.g. Pulaski, Baron DeKalb, the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron v. Steuben, etc. But they were there on their own hook, so to speak.
Yawn. Nope. Read and learn:
http://www.destatis.de/presse/deutsch/pm2006/zdw14.htm
If you can not read it: Our main contractors in Germany for crude oil are Russia (37 million tons), the UK (19 million tons), Norway, (17 million tons) and last but not least Libya (12 million tons). The ME, espechially the Persian Gulf does not play a big role as a energy source for us. The nations who buy oil there are first of all the US, then Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan and - to a lesser degree the Australians. Of course we have a strong interest that the situation there stays stable, since you Americans will buy as much as possible on the oilmarket in Rotterdam if the situation in the Persian Gulf gets worse. Naturally this is going to end up in exploding oil prices that we would have to pay then.
Before you give any statements you should inform yourself properly about the facts instead of stammering such emotional and moronic stuff.
You are not my friend.
This is okay. Anyway in this case you should not whine like a old Egyptian fishwife that we Europeans do not help you out in your various wars. Since we thought that we were friends we supported you with our troops in such a lonesome and godforsaken place like Afghanistan were we have for sure absolutely no interests. To give you some numbers of the material and men we wasted for our "friendship" with you:
France - 742 men ; the fourth largest ISAF contingent. Nine French soldiers have been killed as part of ISAF and OEF: 2 in a vehicle accident, and 7 in various ambushes and gunbattles.
Belgium - 616 men
Bulgaria - 150 men
Czech Republic - 17 men
Denmark - 122 men. Three were killed in an ordnance disposal explosion along with two Germans.
Estonia - 10 men
Germany - 3,000 men, making Germany the largest contributor to the ISAF. 18 have been killed: 7 in an accidental helicopter crash, 4 in accidental disposal explosions, one in a vehicle accident and 6 in ambushes and attacks.
Greece - 171 men, some stationed at Kabul airport and others at hospitals. There are around 130 soldiers and 45 air force personnel. At least two were wounded in a suicide attack in November 2005.
Hungary - 159 men
Iceland - 20 men. Consisting of a Mobile/Military Observation Team and various personnel operating Kabul International Airport.
Italy - 506 men. Six have died under ISAF: one in a vehicle accident, one as a result of an accidental weapon discharge, one in an accidental civilian plane crash, one due to a heart attack and two in a roadside bombing.
Latvia - 9 men
Lithuania - 115 men
Luxemburg - 10 men
Netherlands - 1807 men - 250 in Kabul, consisting of F-16 and C-130 detachments and a logistics unit. 200 in Kandahar, consisting of a Cougar(helicopter) detachment and a logistical unit. 200 in Deh Rawod (Uruzgan) consisting of a PRT, logistics and an infantry company. 1000 in Tarin Kowt (Uruzgan) consisting of a PRT, logistics, engineering, two infantry companies and an AH-64 Apache detachment. 3 Dutch personnel have been killed, 2 in an accidental helicopter crash and 1 in an accidental F-16 crash in 2006.
Norway - 450 men - 1 Norwegian soldier killed in an ambush in Kabul, 2004. Several others wounded in hostile and non-hostile acts spanning 2001-2006 (ISAF and OEF).
Poland - 100 men (an additional 1,000 troops due in February 2007)
Portugal - 156 men. One soldier was killed when his vehicle was struck by an exploding roadside bomb.
Romania - 72 men. Four have been killed: One in a firefight which later claimed the life of another badly wounded soldier, one in a landmine explosion, and one in a roadside bombing which severely damaged a Romanian tank.
Slovakia - 17 men
Slovenia - 49 men (May 2006)
Spain – Approximately 800 men. 18 died in a helicopter crash in August 2005, while 62 Spanish soldiers were killed in May 2003 when their plane crashed in Turkey as it was returning home. Another soldier was killed in a bombing.
Turkey – 825 men; the third largest contingent and the only Muslim country in the ISAF. Turkey's responsibilities include providing security for Kabul and western regions of the country, as well as providing reconstruction teams.
United Kingdom – 461 men. The UK was one of the first countries to join the US-led coalition into Afghanistan. 6 soldiers have died as part of ISAF (as well as 31 under [OEF]): one was murdered by a comrade (who then committed suicide), one died in an accidental weapon discharge, 2 were killed in separate suicide bombings and one died in a firefight.
That is a total of 10.384 European soldiers serving in Afghanistan in the moment. This number will be increased in the next months.
If you can do without this just urge your President to get rid of this useless nuisance. If he gives us a hint that we should leave, since he and his millitary can do everything alone, we will be happy to oblige. Your GIs can have the bunnies of the Playboy-Clubs in Kandahar, Tora Bora, Kunduz or Kabul alone.
Everything - even every war has to be in a certain ratio between efford and effect. If we take i.e. your misson in Iraq you had to invest roundabout 300 billion US-$ and
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
last but not least the lives of over 2.500 American soldiers. The present situation is unstable and it is foreseeable that a expensive US deployment will be nessecary for a long time. Therefore the question must be allowed, if this mission pays out. We Europeans reconsidered this problem much earlier and came to a negative conclusion. This is one of the reasons why nearly nobody in Europe saw any reason to start a war because of this toothless idiot Saddam Hussein since we were (and still are) not convinced that he was a danger to us or the United States after 1991. It is exactly the same thing with Afghanistan. Those Europeans who joined into your "coalition of the willing" did that soley because of their deep friendship to America. Period. Since nearly nobody of us has any interests down there, they would have been much better off, if they would have left you alone there. I.e. the Polish gouvernment broke to pieces recently since large parts of the present coalition there did not see any sense to invest more soldiers and money into such places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
Besides - Of course you also can leave Europe with your millitary (we earned for sure enough money from your soldiers in Germany during the last 50 years) if you do not like us. The recent deployment wasn't that impressive anyway. Just stop to waste your money on such (really - this is no sarcasm of me - we do not need GIs here anymore due to the end of the cold war) senseless stuff like your millitary presence here. The influence you have on us because of this is minimal anyway. If we want to sell our technology or weapons to the Chicoms i.e. we will not ask you (Chirac and Schroeder suggested to do so since a long time and recently the president of Italy, Romano Prodi did). We haven't done this in the past, because -thank God- we still have some reasonable politicians who stopped those morons in the right time. But - it was for sure not America's influence that made this possible. If the decay of our relationship will continue it is not said that this policy can be prevailed by the "Atlantic" European politicians in the long term. Therefore such hateful stammering like your moronic comments is quite dangerous since it could mean for American GIs that they have to face something much more advanced in their future conflicts than that old Russian and Chinese junk of contemporary Iraq and Iran.
But then again, you European socialists think that being a Christian and ascribing to American values is a negative thing, don't you?)
Nope. American values (I read your Constitution once) are something really good. Besides of that you should realize that the leader of the biggest Christian church comes -guess what- from "godless" Germany. I.e. my 3 kids go into a private catholic school that ins runned by the Jesuites. Not exactly a place to indulge atheism. :-) Since I run my own business and employ people I am for sure far away to be a socialist.
You are well advised if you stop giving more brainless and emotional statements. The world is not just black and white. It has many different colors and not all are mapped in the propaganda stuff you obviously got your "informations" from.
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