World War I

Excavators near a village in northern France began work Tuesday unearthing the remains of as many as 400 long-lost Australian and British soldiers who perished in World War I. The remains, buried in a cluster of mass graves discovered last year, are to be individually reinterred in a cemetery being built near the site.

Frank Buckles, frail but sharp, surrounds himself with totems from another time and distant lands. A china cabinet is filled with military patches, an old wireless telegraph and other knick-knacks he collected while stationed in England, France and Germany. One wall holds a sepia-toned photograph of Buckles as a fresh-faced soldier of 16 posing with the rest of his grim-looking Army unit.

A top congressional Democratic leader predicted Tuesday that a controversial resolution calling the early 20th century killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a genocide will pass the House. That expectation came despite Bush administration worries that the vote would offend Turkey, an important U.S. ally. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a co-sponsor, made that prediction. He said he hoped for a vote before Thanksgiving.

Farida Briner remembers her mother talking about the day a committee of fellow Montanans confronted her German-born father on the family farm near Billings. "We should hang him from his own apple tree!" one of them yelled. Herman Bausch's crime? He spoke his opposition to the war being fought in Europe in 1918, and to the Liberty bonds and stamp drives that supported it. Briner's mother, 19 and with a newborn in arms, went and stood defiantly in front of the tree.

Church bells tolled across northern France to mark the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, one of history's worst blood baths. Britain led Allied forces into battle hoping to end 18 months of deadlock with a decisive victory over German forces. When the fighting ended Nov. 18, Britain had only advanced about six miles, and more than 1 million troops lay dead. Prince Charles called the World War I battle "a most profound shock" for Britain, and "an unutterable hell."

More than 300 British soldiers who were executed for cowardice, desertion or disobeying orders during World War I will be pardoned, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday. The decision came after a decades-long effort by the family of Pvt. Harry Farr. In 1916, a firing squad executed the 25-year-old for cowardice after he refused to return to the front lines.

The only testament to Francis Lupo's death in a World War I battle has long been his name, etched on a French chapel wall with those of hundreds of other missing soldiers. On Tuesday, 88 years after he was killed during an attack on German forces near Soissons, France, the recently discovered remains of the Army private were buried with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

World War I ended nearly 90 years ago, only a few of its U.S. veterans are still alive and, about a decade ago, its national monument was closed after years of neglect and deterioration. But this weekend, the "war to end all wars" takes center stage when the National World War I Museum opens in Kansas City, Mo., giving the public a chance to learn about -- and from -- the conflict that catapulted the United States toward superpower status.

Harry M. Lockwood, John Clyde Collison and James Noel Kerr are among the 20 Los Angeles High School graduates who died in World War I. Today their names would be virtually unknown -- except for the 75-year-old stained-glass window installed in their honor at a library their classmates were determined to build. Los Angeles High School Memorial Library opened in 1930, a quaint Tudor-style brick building set in the 3-acre Memorial Park across from the high school at Olympic and Rimpau boulevards.

Memorial Day parade organizers were considering using actors to represent veterans of World War I when they learned about 103-year-old Lloyd Brown -- one of the last living veterans of the war. Brown plans to ride in a parade today in Washington to represent the rest of the 4.7 million members of the U.S. armed forces who took part in the Great War. The Charlotte Hall, Md., man is one of the 30 veterans still living, according to an unofficial estimate by the Department of Veterans Affairs.