Veteran Spotlight
Francis E. Valentine
WWII Vet Buried in France
Richard D. L. Fulton
Francis Edward Valentine was born on March 25, 1919, in Rocky Ridge to parents Nathan Luther and Cora F. Valentine.
He had two brothers, Wilber and Luther, and three sisters, Catherine, Mabel, and Louise.
A marriage license was issued in July 1940 to Valentine and Viola Frances “Ollie” Lawrence, of Taneytown, and the couple was married on July 27 (not 1941, which was reported elsewhere). According to the July 30, 1940, edition of The (Baltimore) Evening Sun, the couple had been wed in the parlor of the Y.M.C.A. in Frederick, by the Reverand Dr. P. E. Heimer.
The couple had four children, Robert, Phillip, Patricia, and Barbara, according to ancestry.com.
Valentine registered for the draft in 1944 and listed his address at that time as Rocky Ridge and his employer as the Blue Ridge Rubber Company in Taneytown. His height was given as 5’7” and his weight was recorded as being 147 pounds. His draft card indicated that he had a light complexion, brown hair, and brown eyes.
Upon being inducted into the Army, Valentine served as a private first-class in the 276th Infantry Regiment, 70th Infantry Division.
The 276th Infantry Regiment arrived in France in December 1944, disembarking in Marseille, and subsequently dispatched to the border, between France and Germany.
On February 17, 1945, when “in the foggy, gray mist of early morning, the 70th Infantry Division (the 276th inclusive) surged forward, its sights set on Saarbrucken, capital of the rich, long-disputed Saarland,” according to lonesentry.com, apparently citing Trailblazers: The Story of the 70th Infantry Division.
Lonesentry.com continued, “On February 18, as the 276th deployed for action, they immediately came under a murderous fire from the Germans, advancing “under 88 mm. artillery fire, intense machine gun fire, and terrible cold rain…”
On February 19, the 276th had surrounded a fortified position located in Schlossberg Castle, “after suffering many casualties.”
From there, the 70th Infantry (the 276th inclusive) pushed on to Forbach. The fight to liberate Forbach lasted from late-1944 until February 1945.
The 276th and the 274th were subsequently credited with the liberation of the town.
It was apparently during the final push into Forbach that Valentine was killed in action on February 25, 1945 (however, some published, online reports indicate, erroneously, that Valentine had died in Frederick).
Oddly enough, little detailed information was published in the newspapers at the time of Valentine’s death in 1945… the December 29, 1945, issue of The (Baltimore) News, reporting in a recap of events of 1945 that “Pfc. Francis Edward Valentine, Rocky Ridge, dies of wounds sustained in battle.”
Valentine’s body was never returned to the United States, and, instead, was buried in Epinal American Cemetery and Memorial, Department des Vosges, Lorraine, France.
The World War II American Cemetery and Memorial in Epinal contains the graves of more than 5,250 war dead, including Four Medal of Honor recipients, and nearly 425 names on the Walls of the Missing, according to abmc.gov.
Valentine was temporarily buried upon his death in 1945 in a cemetery designated as #3523, in Block 3B, Row 13, in Grave Number 7317, and was subsequently reburied in Epinal Cemetery in Block A, Row 7, in Grave Number 12, according to the U.S. Headstone and Interment Records for U.S., Military Cemeteries on Foreign Soil.
Valentine’s wife, Viola, passed away on January 5, 1999, in Frederick, and was interred in the Resthaven Memorial Gardens, also in Frederick.
Viola remarried in 1948 to Ray Wilbur Long of Rocky Ridge, who had also preceded her in death, having died on January 6. 1982.
