“Marguerite Walitier / Vive La France 12 Aout 1918″
A Canadian soldier from the 1st Machine Gun Battalion shows off a large zucchini which was presented to the Prince of Wales. Photo taken in Valenciennes, France in October, 1918.
For this Memorial Day I give you an obit from my Grandma Alice’s scrapbook. She clipped a good number of them from friends and family that passed over the years. In this instance we have one for Pvt. Joseph Janzer, whose wife apparently worked with my Grandpa George. (I’m guessing it was with him because of the “Dept. 61” listing.) While the obit gives us some cursory, and rather sad background on Pvt. Janzer, I decided to see what else I could find.
Joseph Janzer was a member of the U.S. Army’s 141st Field Artillery, which is known as the Washington Artillery. According to a Cook County genealogy site he was killed in action on February 4, 1945. At that time his unit was fighting in what became known as the Colmar Pocket in Northeast France. This pocket was created by a Nazi offensive that in turn created a bulge into the Allied line. It is not far from the location of this battle that his remains are interred at the Epinal American Cemetery in France.
While it is impossible for me to know, I do hope his wife was able to make it out there at least once to visit him. With that said, someone cared enough to lay these flowers and flags at his gravesite as you can see in this Find A Grave photo. My guess is that Pvt. Janzer has family out there that remember him.
Prince Flemming Valdemar , son of Prince Axel, cousin of King Christian X of Denmark, with members of the Danish Resistance in Copenhagen Denmark - May 7-9 1945
