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WWI Soldier Comes Home at Long Last
His Remains Found Decades After He Fell on a French Battlefield, Ohio Private Emerges From Obscurity to Full Honors at Arlington
By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 25, 2006; A01
Missing in action, presumed dead.
And eventually he faded from living memory. His generation passed away, with everyone who loved him, everyone who mourned him. Time rendered him faceless. He was just a name, one of hundreds chiseled in limestone in a cemetery chapel 4,000 miles from home.
LUPO FRANCIS PVT 18TH INF
1ST DIV JULY 21 1918 OHIO
A lost doughboy.
But now he is found.
Discovered by chance, unearthed in 2003 by archaeologists looking for ancient remains, Pvt. Francis Lupo of Cincinnati has returned from the front at last, nearly 90 years after boarding a troop ship for France. Tomorrow, the Army will bury him again, this time with honors at Arlington National Cemetery, laying to rest possibly the longest-missing U.S. soldier ever recovered and identified: a ghost of World War I.
Lupo, killed at 23, most likely on his first day in heavy fighting, will get a fine Arlington send-off, with all the Army's Old Guard solemn pomp: a horse-drawn caisson; a bugler; rifle volleys; a tri-folded American flag for his next of kin, a niece born 15 years after the armistice.
Article Link -- it's too long to be posted here in its entirety.
Note: as I post this at 0930EDT 25 SEP 2006, the funeral will be held at 1100EDT 26 SEP 2006 at Arlington National Cemetery, starting at the post chapel. If you're in the area, you're free, and you have the appropriate service dress uniform, I'd encourage attendance -- please be there by 1030EDT. I'm in NJ as I type this, and I'm seriously contemplating getting up really early on Tuesday to haul my sorry a$$ down there for the service.
His Remains Found Decades After He Fell on a French Battlefield, Ohio Private Emerges From Obscurity to Full Honors at Arlington
By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 25, 2006; A01
Missing in action, presumed dead.
And eventually he faded from living memory. His generation passed away, with everyone who loved him, everyone who mourned him. Time rendered him faceless. He was just a name, one of hundreds chiseled in limestone in a cemetery chapel 4,000 miles from home.
LUPO FRANCIS PVT 18TH INF
1ST DIV JULY 21 1918 OHIO
A lost doughboy.
But now he is found.
Discovered by chance, unearthed in 2003 by archaeologists looking for ancient remains, Pvt. Francis Lupo of Cincinnati has returned from the front at last, nearly 90 years after boarding a troop ship for France. Tomorrow, the Army will bury him again, this time with honors at Arlington National Cemetery, laying to rest possibly the longest-missing U.S. soldier ever recovered and identified: a ghost of World War I.
Lupo, killed at 23, most likely on his first day in heavy fighting, will get a fine Arlington send-off, with all the Army's Old Guard solemn pomp: a horse-drawn caisson; a bugler; rifle volleys; a tri-folded American flag for his next of kin, a niece born 15 years after the armistice.
Article Link -- it's too long to be posted here in its entirety.
Note: as I post this at 0930EDT 25 SEP 2006, the funeral will be held at 1100EDT 26 SEP 2006 at Arlington National Cemetery, starting at the post chapel. If you're in the area, you're free, and you have the appropriate service dress uniform, I'd encourage attendance -- please be there by 1030EDT. I'm in NJ as I type this, and I'm seriously contemplating getting up really early on Tuesday to haul my sorry a$$ down there for the service.
