TIMES, THURSDAY, MAY 29, 2014 • 60 Marking Their Place In History With New Headstones are busy as ever, helping people find their ancestors. Anthony Salamone helps families and others find sometimes long lost graves of veteran’s and then walks them through the process with the Veterans Association (VA) of getting a military headstone for them. Finding another lost soldier In another story, on May 17, a World War I soldier that was killed in France in 1918—in a place with a name as poetic as its tragic story, the Rouge Bouquet woods—was finally given the military burial ceremony and headstone he had earned, at his family grave site in the Pleasant Hill section of the Evergreens Cemetery. But this military ceremony was unique, in that a poem had been written about the night that soldier was killed, and that poem was read aloud for all those who gathered to pay their respects for that young soldier. Found by his great niece, Diane Lowe, who along with others in the family, long believed that their great uncle, Pvt. Charles T. Luginsland, was still buried in France. Luginsland was in fact buried in France right after he was killed on Mar. 7, 1918, after the bunker he, and 21 others in his unit were in, was bombed. Only 5 bodies were recovered, Luginsland one of them, and only 2 had survived. The other 15 who succumbed after being buried under the collapsed bunker, had to remain entombed their, only after valiant efforts were made to recover them, while still under attack. According to the timeline provided me by Lowe, “The Regimental Chaplain, Fr. Francis P. Duffy, said a prayer over the dead. Afterward, the famous poet, Joyce Kilmer, who was a member of the Regiment wrote a poem entitled Rouge Bouquet in honor of those brave men lost that night. The first chance Father Duffy had after the shelling, the Regiment was in a little clearing surrounded by pine trees in the woods near Croixmare, about four miles from the front. There they buried those few men they had been able to excavate from the blasted dugout. The 165th Infantry lost 26 dead during its 10 days in the front lines of the quiet sector. After conducting a regular service, Father Duffy recited Joyce Kilmer’s Rouge Bouquet to the accompaniment of taps on the bugle.” It was only through Lowe’s research did she find out that, “Charles died just four days short of his 21st birthday, and two years after his death my great grandfather sent a letter to the War Department demanding that his son be brought back “home” here to America to be near his mother. He has been lying here in The Evergreens for decades, his name long erased by the elements from the original family gravestone.” Lowe remembers, “Since I was a child my father told the story of his Uncle Charlie and we would watch the movie “The Fighting 69th” every time is was shown on TV. Maybe that is why I developed such a strong An honor guard folds the flag during a military ceremony for Charles T. Luginsland, a fallen World War I soldier, whose remains were recently discovered interred at the Cemetery of the Evergreens. interest in my family history”. Private Luninsland’s was part of the famous NY Fighting 69th but in August of 1917, the 69th NY Infantry was then re-designated 165th Infantry Regiment, 83rd Brigade, 42nd Division. For Lowe, “keeping his name and memory alive became a personal quest. So, as you can see this military stone bearing his name will remind those in passing that he is an American hero.” Although there are thousands of military men and women buried in “The Evergreens,” from every war our nation has ever fought in, many have not been given the honor of having a military head-stone, and many more have no headstone or marker at all, as in the case of all service men and women not buried in a national military cemetery. The responsibility for someone, (photo: Caroline Roswell) military or not, having a headstone, falls on the family of the deceased. So the reasons people are buried without headstones are as numerous as each person’s circumstances. Thousands of other soldiers who served the country, including those that gave their lives doing so, have been buried in potter’s fields as a result of their circumstances at their time of death. -CONTINUED FROM PG. 21-
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