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Joseph County (Indiana Historical Commission, 1921)
The wars file's rolls held this section's lost person all along: the township's one First World War death is a man whose resting place the state's own roll could not state. The last documented facts, at the roll's strength: Private Martin Gunderson, born 9 October 1886 at Suttons Bay, Michigan; moved to Lakeville in 1916; a contractor; entered service 28 March 1918 at South Bend; trained at Camp Taylor, Kentucky; served overseas from 2 June 1918 with Company E, 112th Infantry, 28th Division, at the Second Battle of the Marne; died of disease 26 August 1918. His Gold Star entry then closes with the three words this section exists for: "Burial place unknown." No home-ground grave exists to test — the heroes pass already prints him as the reverse hard case, a genuine township man claimed by residence and service whose resting place is an open record, not a silent assumption. The file that would settle it is named: the federal burial record for the 28th Division's dead of that summer (American Battle Monuments Commission and Graves Registration tradition) together with the county's return-of-remains record — many 1918 dead were brought home in 1920–21 and many were not, and which course Gunderson's took stands in no carrier this build has read. He is carried here with his last documented fact (died of disease, 26 August 1918, in service in France) and his settling file, exactly as the item prescribes; the mystery is not that he vanished, but that the state, having counted him, could not say where he lies.