Arlington National Cemetery 100 Years
100 years ago today, Charles Lee Janets (Jenets) of Trafford was interred at Arlington National Cemetery on April 20, 1922, in Section 18, Grave 4291. After three years and seven months, the gravesite at Arlington would be his third burial and his final resting place.
Jenets was killed-in-action on September 14, 1918, while serving with the 14th Machine Gun Battalion, 5th Division, during the horrific fighting for the Saint-Mihiel Salient. During September 12-16, 1918, this battle of World War I took the lives of 1,449 men from the 5th Division, nine coming from Jenets own battalion. His body was initially buried in an isolated grave outside of Thiaucourt-Regniéville, a commune in north-eastern France. The photograph of the battlefield seen here was taken in early 1919 in the vicinity of where Jenets was first buried. Note the hillside/terrain north of his burial site, the photographer wrote “foxholes” on the print to illustrate the number of shallow ditches scattered on the hillside where the infantry had to dig into the earth for protection against incoming enemy shelling.
His second burial took place on April 21, 1919, where he was interred in the Saint-Mihiel American Cemetery, about 2 miles from where he fell in battle. At the request of his family, his remains were returned to the United States and he was interred in the Arlington National Cemetery. His headstone at Arlington was inscribed with the name JANETS, reflecting many of the Army records dating back to his enlistment on September 14, 1917, exactly one year before his date of death.
It’s curious to understand why or who changed the spelling on his Army records, especially considering that 3 months prior to his enlistment, the soldier himself signed his draft registration card as “Charles Jenets” when he appeared before the local draft board in June 1917. After he was killed, his father submitted a “War Service Record” to the Pennsylvania War History Commission in June 1919 writing his son’s name as “Charles Jenets,” and we can assume, signing his own name on the document as “Frank Jenets, Trafford PA.”
When the Trafford community dedicated the granite and bronze World War Memorial on November 11, 1919, they remembered their fallen soldier as “CHAS. JENETS” casting his name in bronze letters.
In the French commune of Thiaucourt-Regniéville where Jenets was killed, a bronze memorial was erected showing an American soldier shaking hands with a French soldier; two soldiers from different countries, different languages, different cultures, brought together to fight side by side. #LestWeForget #WW1 #ArlingtonNational
