{"id":142474,"date":"2023-06-08T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=142474"},"modified":"2023-06-07T19:57:35","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T23:57:35","slug":"unknown-american-soldier-alone-more-than-100-years-is-finally-buried-with-his-brothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=142474","title":{"rendered":"Unknown American soldier, alone more than 100 years, is finally buried with his brothers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial, France<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Get a tissue ready, allergy season just arrived.<\/p>\n

Army Times<\/a> has the story of the first Unknown to be buried from the Great War since 1988. He’s the first burial at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery (not pictured, but I bet it looks a lot like this) in more than 90 years. It’s an amazing story.<\/p>\n

After 105 years, the remains of an American doughboy were finally given a proper burial.<\/p>\n

Today, the American Battle Monuments Commission, alongside French and U.S. officials, interred its first Great War unknown since 1988 \u2014 the first burial at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France since 1932.<\/p>\n

On February 8, 2022, local undertaker Jean-Paul Feval was digging a fresh gravesite in the cemetery at Villers-Sur-F\u00e8re, in northeastern France, when he stumbled upon \u201chuman bones, along with artifacts that would later include pieces of a helmet, a stretcher, a trench knife and a corroded, unreadable dog tag,\u201d according to a Washington Post report.<\/p>\n

The stretcher was a particularly unique find.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the fighting they tried to get rid of the bodies as soon as they could,\u201d Bert Caloud, the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery\u2019s superintendent, told The Post. \u201cThey would roll them up in ponchos. They\u2019d roll them up in blankets. They could carry them on stretchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy guess is he was dead, and what was left of him was put on a stretcher,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

For the past year French and American officials have worked in tandem to verify beyond a reasonable doubt that the remains found were, in fact, American.<\/p>\n

While the identity of the American soldier remains unknown, it was determined that he was killed in July 1918 around the fight for Villers-Sur-F\u00e8re.<\/p>\n

According to Mike Knapp, the commission\u2019s director of historical services, the \u201carcheological artifacts gave a good indication\u201d that this was the gravesite of an American soldier. However, Graves Registration Service maps created in 1919-20, now housed at the National Archives, helped to verify the location of the American gravesites from the Great War.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been by himself for over 100 years, and finally we can give him the dignified and honored burial that he rates,\u201d Caloud told the Post.<\/p>\n

Buried with a Purple Heart and given full military honors, the unknown soldier joins 6,012 of his comrades \u2014 597 unknowns \u2014 where they already rest.<\/p>\n

His gravesite reads, \u201cHere Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But to God.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ABMC, which was started in 1923 by President Warren Harding to honor U.S. World War I dead overseas, \u201coperates 26 cemeteries on foreign soil where 123,000 service members from World Wars I and II are buried, and thousands of others are memorialized,\u201d according to The Post.<\/p>\n

The soldier\u2019s discovery \u201cis an extraordinarily big deal,\u201d said Knapp.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere we are \u2026 105 years after this guy died and \u2026 he\u2019s getting a full honors, military funeral just like some veteran would get today at Arlington,\u201d Knapp continued. \u201cI think that says a great deal.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s more background at the link. We might not know who he was, but we know he was American. Take your place in formation, soldier, and rest easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Get a tissue ready, allergy season just arrived. Army Times has the story of the first … Unknown American soldier, alone more than 100 years, is finally buried with his brothers<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":140578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,210,217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical","category-no-longer-missing","category-we-remember"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/140578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}