WWI Veteran Just Misses French Honor

After weeks of anticipating a final high honor for enduring the horrors of infantry warfare, one of the last veterans of World War I joined the ranks of departed doughboys--just two hours before an envoy arrived with France’s most distinguished award: the Legion of Honor medal.

Charles Fackler, 98, of Allentown died in a nursing home, his 68-year-old son at his side, as relatives, friends and fellow veterans prepared to attend an award ceremony in the home’s reception room.

“He missed it by two hours. He was waiting for it. I think it kept him going this long,” son Bill Fackler said. “It was a sad occasion. We had everything organized for that day. The presentation was to be at 2 p.m. He died at quarter to 12.”

The elder Fackler, who served in the Meuse-Argonne offensive of September 1918, had been named a Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honor by the president of France. That nation decided last year, on the 80th anniversary of the 1918 armistice, to honor Allied soldiers who fought in France.

Among “a bunch of medals” he had received, Fackler considered the Purple Heart his highest honor. He was founder and past president of the Lehigh Valley chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, his son said.

Before offensives were waged with electronics and long-range missiles, Charles Fackler’s war was fought up close and on the ground, often with bayonets. He was wounded by bullets and shrapnel and gassed several times as he slogged through the fields and forests as part of the Army’s Company D, 112th Regiment, 28th Division.

“It was called the Bucket of Blood. We survived like animals in the tall grass, weeds, bushes and the likes of that,” he recalled in a September interview. “My chest looks like a checkerboard with scars.”

Fackler had said the French medal would be his next highest honor, according to his minister, the Rev. Walter Wagner, pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Allentown.

“He was proudest of all of the Purple Heart, that he was wounded in the service of his country, trying to repel an aggressor and safeguard peace,” Wagner said. “In a sense, the French Legion of Honor would have been the obverse. On the other side, this was the French government saying to him ‘We recognize that too.’ ”

Though a CAT scan in December showed cancer invading Fackler’s stomach and liver and he had grown rapidly weaker, his son said, “He was waiting for this. We spoke of it many times.”

When the old soldier slipped into a coma and died Jan. 21, family members, friends and fellow veterans were already en route to the Whitehall Township nursing home, and it was too late to call off the medal ceremony. Instead, it was turned into a memorial service.

“The consul from France was on his way from Washington with the medal. There were 60 or 65 veterans there, and friends. It turned out to be a very nice affair,” Bill Fackler said Jan. 27. “The individuals from the American Legion and Purple Heart got up and said a few words. It was a little emotional, to say the least.”

Shortly afterward, members of Fackler’s veterans’ groups--Purple Heart, American Legion Post 576, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 13, and Disabled American Veterans--gathered again at Allentown’s Greenwood Cemetery for a funeral.

Fackler had a soldier’s send-off. A bugler played taps and a rifle brigade fired a salute. Fellow veterans folded the flag that draped his casket and presented it to his son.

“He must be smiling down on us,” Bill Fackler said. Though none of the veterans was old enough to remember World War I, he said, “They were all buddies of his. They all loved him. A couple of the fellows, they just broke down emotionally.”

Charles Fackler wore the Legion of Honor for his funeral. Then, like the flag, it went to his son. “I kept it. We didn’t bury it with him. It is beautiful,” Bill Fackler said.