Veterans Day 2018

This coming Sunday, 11 November, we commemorate Veterans Day. Originally called Armistice Day, Veterans Day was created to recognize of the end of World War I. Fighting between the Allied nations and Germany ceased on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. That date is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

One hundred years ago this Sunday!

Resthaven Memory Gardens, Auglaize County, Ohio. (2014 by Karen)

Veterans Day was made a legal holiday in 1938.

Because this year is the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI, Hubert Martin, of Linthal, Alsace, France, last year brought to my attention that a young man from Mercer County, Ohio, was killed in action near Linthal during WWI.

Martin is the president of the Historical Memorial Society in Linthal, in the Vosges Mountains, and was planning a special ceremony to be held in September 2018 to honor 49 U.S. soldiers who were killed in those mountains during the war. Martin was also preparing a book in honor of those fallen soldiers, with two pages devoted to each soldier, to include information about each soldier, their military life, their family, and their hometown.

August Froning was the Mercer County soldier killed in action in those French mountains, near the village of Linthal, on 29 September 1918, while serving in Company L of the 54th Infantry, U.S. Army. He was buried in their temporary military cemetery of Oberlauchen. Today a tombstone monument to August Froning stands in Saint Sebastian Cemetery, Mercer County. [1]

August Froning was born 30 January 1892 in Mercer County. He was a resident of rural Chickasaw and was the son of Herman and Catherine (Pickenbrook) Froning. From my research I learned that he has a nephew living in the area and possibly even more relatives.

Froning’s name is listed on Mercer County’s WWI Honor Roll plaque, located in front of the Celina American Legion Post 210, on State Route 703.

WWI Roll of Honor, Celina American Legion Post 210. (2014 photo by Karen)

Martin also told me that another area soldier, Glenn Homer Nichols, from the Venedocia area, was killed in the Vosges Mountains of France on 21 September 1918. Nichols was also from the 54th Infantry.

Their ceremony is a wonderful tribute to honor those United States soldiers who were killed near their town.

My dad and his two brothers all served in the U.S. Army at different times.

Miller brothers, Herbert, LaVerne, and Kenneth, all veterans.

We owe all of our veterans a big Thank You for their service to our country.

Let us never forget their service.

Remember to thank a veteran on Veterans Day, or better yet, thank them every day. And remember those veterans who are no longer with us, who sacrificed so much for us.

 

[1] Find a Grave memorial no. 25501993, August H. Froning, Saint Sebastian Cemetery, Mercer County, Ohio.

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