Missing Soldier Buried 90 Years Post-Battle
WASHINGTON, Sept. 26, 2006 — -- In a remote corner of Arlington National Cemetery, there was a burial today that, had you been visiting the cemetery, you might have overlooked.
There were almost as many honor guards as mourners. At first glance, it seemed that not many people cared about the burial of Francis Lupo from E Company, 2nd Battalion, U.S. Army. But they should.
He could be the longest-missing U.S. soldier ever to be recovered and identified, a ghost of World War I. Almost 90 years after leaving America to fight the Germans, Lupo has come home.
His closest living relative had never even met him; his niece knows him only from a photograph.
"He was a handsome, handsome boy," said Rachel Kleisinger.
Lupo grew up on the banks of the Ohio River, a child of Sicilian immigrants and one of eight children. In 1917, when the U.S. entered World War I, Lupo, along with millions of other young men, registered for the draft. In March 1918, he set off across the Atlantic to serve on the front lines.
He was killed on his first day in battle as troops pushed north in the second battle of the Marne, a major victory for the Allied Powers and the turning point in World War I.
But Private Lupo was among the heavy costs to the U.S. Army. As E Company of the 2nd Battalion advanced across open fields, it encountered its first day of heavy fighting, and Private Lupo was killed.
It was, for his mother, a heavy blow.
"She was always in mourning. That's how I remember my grandmother," Kleisinger said. "She was always, always in mourning."
Discovering a Lost Hero
After Lupo was killed, his battalion advanced quickly, so he was buried in a shallow, temporary grave which, in the fog of war, became permanent.
In 2003, while surveying a construction site, a French archaeologist found some human remains and artifacts and passed them on to Army forensics experts in Hawaii.
"When the remains first came in, we didn't have any idea who these remains could be," said John Byrd of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.
The office responsible for identifying U.S. soldiers' remains had never seen a case that dated back to WWI, when the bones of two soldiers arrived.
A key piece of evidence in identifying the soldier was a wallet with Francis Lupo embossed in leather. Another clue: Private Lupo was short, barely 5 feet tall.
They used DNA samples to definitively identify Lupo, although the other soldier remains unknown.
When Lupo was identified, next of kin had to be found and Kleisinger was located.
She recalled that Francis' mother, who is no longer alive, mourned her son from the day he was listed in a Cincinnati paper as missing.
"She never could bring herself to believe he was dead," Kleisinger said. "She always thought he was coming home."
It may have taken 85 years to find this soldier and identify and bury him with a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, but the Army does not forget its dead.
And so, this young boy -- only educated through the fifth grade -- who left a job delivering newspapers to fight in France was buried with full honors today. His mother would have been proud.