A break from Herb for some other WWI soldiers...

I have gotten a comment from my third cousin Chuck with whom I connected through Ancestry.com and now Facebook. He has realized through the first few letters that Charles is his grandfather, Charles Oliver Cornell. That makes Grace his grandmother. They were the ones living in Hasbrouk Heights, New Jersey. Aunt Ida is, therefore, Chuck's great grandmother.

Charles is working at Banker's Trust in New York. Case, Pomeroy & Co seems to have sold bonds. I now believe Herb was training to sell bonds on Wall Street when he decided to enlist.

I was consulting the weather channel web site and was interested in an article about what is found when the glaciers melt - they mention the mummy found in the Italian alps which we have already discussed. I had never heard about the White War - battles fought in the Alps during World War I. So, ten months after my grandfather is marching around Pennsylvania and sleeping under the stars harsh Spring battles are being fought and men are being buried in the snow. Pretty gruesome stuff. I hope the families of these men will now have some closure.

Funerals in the Italian alp town of Peio are on the rise, only those being interred aren't of this day and age. Melting glaciers near the small alpine village continue to unveil remains and artifacts from soldiers who fought in the often forgotten "White War" staged in the mountains during World War I. During those times, soldiers from the Austria-Hungary empire battled with Italian troops for supremacy over the mountainous terrain.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers are estimated to have died during the White War, many of whom were claimed by the extreme weather. Temperatures plummeted to 22 below, and avalanches, dubbed the "white death" by soldiers, swallowed companies whole. Many of the soldiers went unaccounted for, the Telegraph notes, their disappearance a solemn reminder of the rigors of war.

But now, nearly a century later, the remains of the lost soldiers have risen to the surface. In recent years, some 80 mummified bodies have risen to the surface of the melting glacier, the Telegraph reports. For instance, in 2004, a mountain guide stumbled across a grisly sight: three soldiers sticking out of a wall of ice upside down. Those remains were found around 12,000 feet above sea level near San Matteo, likely a gruesome side-effect of one of the last battles for the mountain in 1918.

Again, this time in 2013, the remains of two soldiers (pictured below) who had fought in the May 1918 Battle of Presena, the Economist notes, were found in a interment pit that had melted away. So well-preserved were mummified remains, that hair, skin and other features still remained.

The melting glacier doesn't just produce remains, however. On a much more positive note, personal artifacts, such as a love note addressed to "Maria," have also been recovered in the glacier, the Telegraph reports.