A Doughboy Remembered
Eighty-eight years ago, a young Cincinnati man was killed in France at the Second Battle of the Marne. Thousands of Americans lost their lives during this battle, but over the coming days many of us will turn our attention to this particular man, Private Francis Lupo, whose remains have been found and positively identified by the Pentagon's Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory.
Lupo will be buried Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery. I first heard this story a couple of days ago, and have had a hard time putting it out of my mind since. My first thought was that nobody who knew him is alive today. To be found after so long, only to be received into the arms of strangers at home is a sad tale to contemplate.
Yet it won't end so sadly. Lupo's neice, Rachel Kleisinger, who was born after his death, will be able to attend the military funeral. And I have a feeling that there will be no strangers at Arlington on Tuesday. Private Lupo will be one of twenty six former servicemen to be buried that day, but his will likely be a funeral that even the most hardened men will never forget, regardless of what is said. It will be thought universally: We did not know you, but we honor you.
As long overdue as this moment of closure is, it is a moment of honor for Kleisinger, and a moment for contemplation for millions of Americans whose lives have been touched by a man who has been gone nearly a century.
To recall his service is to open a time capsule and see a world and a war to which we cannot relate today. How many of us had the time -- took the time -- to converse with and express our gratitude to a veteran of the Great War? Now, in a time when once again we are a nation at war abroad, we grasp to give thanks to ears, now gone, that would have listened had we cared to speak.
While Lupo's mother Anna could not take comfort in seeing her son properly buried, she may, as she now watches down over his body, take some in knowing that he has been remembered. This closure has never come for thousands of mothers who have gone to the grave waiting, or who still wait, for word of the final whereabouts of their beloved sons.
Francis Lupo is one of the precious few who have been found and returned to family. Let us all take this opportunity to be thankful for his return, thankful for the men and women who make finding and returning our departed servicemen their chosen profession, and of course thankful for Francis Lupo himself, for serving his country and giving up his life for the cause of freedom.
Each soldier's death is a tragedy. Yet wars have been a necessary part of creating and preserving American freedom, and the freedom of many nations across the globe. So how do we as nation tell a woman like Rachel Kleisinger that her uncle's death was "worth it?" That it was a good bargain in the pursuit of freedom? Obviously we can't. But what we can do is give our thanks, never take our freedoms for granted, and continue to keep America the kind of place for which Francis Lupo would fight all over again.
Lupo will be buried Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery. I first heard this story a couple of days ago, and have had a hard time putting it out of my mind since. My first thought was that nobody who knew him is alive today. To be found after so long, only to be received into the arms of strangers at home is a sad tale to contemplate.
Yet it won't end so sadly. Lupo's neice, Rachel Kleisinger, who was born after his death, will be able to attend the military funeral. And I have a feeling that there will be no strangers at Arlington on Tuesday. Private Lupo will be one of twenty six former servicemen to be buried that day, but his will likely be a funeral that even the most hardened men will never forget, regardless of what is said. It will be thought universally: We did not know you, but we honor you.
As long overdue as this moment of closure is, it is a moment of honor for Kleisinger, and a moment for contemplation for millions of Americans whose lives have been touched by a man who has been gone nearly a century.
To recall his service is to open a time capsule and see a world and a war to which we cannot relate today. How many of us had the time -- took the time -- to converse with and express our gratitude to a veteran of the Great War? Now, in a time when once again we are a nation at war abroad, we grasp to give thanks to ears, now gone, that would have listened had we cared to speak.
While Lupo's mother Anna could not take comfort in seeing her son properly buried, she may, as she now watches down over his body, take some in knowing that he has been remembered. This closure has never come for thousands of mothers who have gone to the grave waiting, or who still wait, for word of the final whereabouts of their beloved sons.
Francis Lupo is one of the precious few who have been found and returned to family. Let us all take this opportunity to be thankful for his return, thankful for the men and women who make finding and returning our departed servicemen their chosen profession, and of course thankful for Francis Lupo himself, for serving his country and giving up his life for the cause of freedom.
Each soldier's death is a tragedy. Yet wars have been a necessary part of creating and preserving American freedom, and the freedom of many nations across the globe. So how do we as nation tell a woman like Rachel Kleisinger that her uncle's death was "worth it?" That it was a good bargain in the pursuit of freedom? Obviously we can't. But what we can do is give our thanks, never take our freedoms for granted, and continue to keep America the kind of place for which Francis Lupo would fight all over again.
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