WWI Soldier Comes Home at Long Last

Even in heavily German American Cincinnati, crowds of men cheered and waved their hats when Congress declared war April 6, 1917. Bands played in the streets. Men ages 21 to 30 nationwide were required to register for the draft at their polling places June 5, and nearly 10 million did, among them Lupo.

"It was a gay and mirthful throng fired with excitement," one paper said of the thousands of Cincinnatians who gathered to wish the young men well. Lupo claimed no exemptions; he reported to his registrar that he was 22, unmarried, unencumbered and fit to serve. The press gushed: "The next step is preening the American eagle for his overseas flight, as straight as this bird of hooked beak and strong talons can wing it."

Who knows if he heard the crowds singing?

Into Battle

His draft letter came in September, and he reported for a physical.

As a boy, Lupo had been severely sick at least eight times, racked by some of the suite of illnesses that often proved fatal to children in his era: diphtheria, whooping cough, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever. The bouts left tiny ridges on his teeth that anthropologists would notice a century later.

The typical draftee was just under 5-foot-8. Lupo's height was listed as 5 feet at a time the Army's minimum requirement was 5-foot-1. Anthropologists think he was 4-foot-10. But no matter. America needed fighting men. "Excellent muscular," a doctor noted. He was inducted Oct. 3, 1917, and went off to fight in size 5 1/2 boots.

The making of Lupo the soldier began with a winter at Camp Sherman, Ohio, where he received his basic training. Then, with other new soldiers from the camp, he boarded a troop train for New Jersey. Eventually they crowded onto a ship in Hoboken, and, after a convoy was assembled, they got underway March 14, 1918, off to kick Kaiser Bill.

From the French port where he landed 12 days later, Lupo traveled inland, almost certainly by rail, jammed with other doughboys on a "forty-and-eight," a boxcar built for 40 men or eight horses. Within a day or two, lugging his haversack, he got off at a training depot, where he commenced drilling again and learning more about the trenches.

Finally, on June 2, he went into the line northeast of Paris, joining E Company of the 18th Infantry while the regiment was positioned near the battered village of Cantigny. The 18th, bloodied a few days earlier in fierce fighting to hold the town, needed replacements.

And here came Pvt. Lupo, in clean breeches and tunic, ready to fight the Germans. Raised by devout Catholic parents, he carried a prayer card in his brown leather wallet. It bore the image of a deceased French nun who would soon be canonized, St. Therese of Lisieux. And it bore words.

I will spend my Heaven in doing good on earth .

June passed quietly for Lupo's new outfit in a defensive sector near Montdidier, with some shelling, some trench raids back and forth, but no heavy fighting.