05/20/2024
Honoring Private Frank Dubord, Jr., of Jay. He was one of thirty-three of Franklin County’s fallen soldiers from WWI. He and the other thirty-two are memorialized in my recent book written on their behalf: No Higher Service.
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Frank Faithful Dubord, Jr., of Jay, Maine.
Killed in Action 05 OCTOBER 1918, Age 25.
Private, Company E, 28th Infantry, 1st Division, AEF.
Memorialized at Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, France. Listed on “Tablets of the Missing.” Memorial in Holy Cross Cemetery, Livermore Falls, Maine.
Survived by father Frank Faithful Dubord (Francois Fidele Dubois), mother Marie Rose Delima (Tondreau) Dubord, sisters Florida Blanche Dubord, Alma Dubord, brothers Joseph Louis Philippe Dubord, and Emile J Dubord.
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2725538. One ship from Montreal carried to France a cohort of men from Maine, serial numbers almost adjacent. Among them was the soldier born Francois Fidele Dubord Jr.
He was a paper maker, not a soldier. But in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest operation of the AEF in World War I, he was more than even that. He was a hero.
Frank, the American of French-Canadian descent, chose to serve the colors with his life. German forces were massed at the hills of Exermont, 400 yards away. After two days of heavy shelling by the Americans, his superiors needed a report on the enemy.
Frank volunteered – though it meant crossing the bullet-strafed no-man’s-land between hostile trenches. Amid vicious fire, Private Dubord traversed and scouted the enemy placements, suffering his way back, for the mission had cost him wounds that would mean his death. Yet he returned to report what would be the last things he saw.
For his service, Private Dubord received a posthumous Distinguished Service Cross for heroism. In the melee that followed, his body was never recovered.
Months later, back in Maine, in lieu of the son who would never return, his parents Frank Senior and Marie accepted the cloth and bronze pin on his behalf.
