I am new to this forum and would like to begin research into a relatiive's military service. Starting out, all I have is the information from his 'veteran's tombstone' and no living relatives to substantiate it. Here is what I found on the tombstone:
Nick Ricupero
Pennsylvania
PVT, Co C 17 Tank Bn
World War I
My initial search for the 17 Tank Battalion did not turn up that unit number until the 301st was redesignated as the 17th perhaps in the early 1920's. So it doesn't appear that the 17th would have been in action in WW I. Or, could there be some bad information on the tombstone? Of course he could have been in a different unit in WW I, if at all.
Any unit rosters out there with this gentleman's name on them?
I will make a request to the military records folks to determine if his service record still exists, but are there other avenues that I should be researching?
Nobody with that name shipped to France with an AEF Tank Corps unit that I can discover. I did stumble into your ancestor's obituary on Findagrave.com that states (in part):
Birth:
Jul. 21, 1901 Messina Città Metropolitana di Messina Sicilia, Italy
Death:
Jan. 31, 1972 Indiana Indiana County Pennsylvania, USA
Nick Ricupero, 70, of 1150 Maple St., Indiana, died unexpectedly Monday evening January 31, 1972 at his home. A son of Philip and Rose Russo Ricupero, he was born July 21, 1901, at Messina, Sicily.
Mr. Ricupero was a member of the St. Bernard's Church, Indiana, the Sons of Italy Lodge #1279, the B.P.O.E. Lodge #931 of Indiana, and was a veteran of World War I. He was a resident of Indiana since 1925 and was an employee of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
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It would appear he would have been about 17 years old at the time of the Armistice--unlikely that he was enlisted in the Tank Service at that time.
In June 1921, however, the remnants of the the 301st and 303rd Tank Battalions wee consolidated and re-designated as the the 17th Tank Battalion (Heavy).
But, something is just not right besides the unit / age discrepancies. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania doesn't have a military headstone request for this man. That is pretty odd. There is no WWI draft card on file for him (nor should there be--he was too young). I honestly don't think he was a WWI vet, though his family may have thought so when they had him buried.
Thank you for your response with far more information than I had been unable to uncover. If this comes through, it is a photo of the tombstone that I discovered for my uncle Nick Ricupero. Rather than a family purchased memorial, it appears to be a government agency issued marker - as many of the other veteran grave sites had in this cemetery. That's not to say that it is correct or incorrect. Based on your research (and his age) it would have been virtually impossible for him to have been in WWI unless his lied about his age. But still the manifests and unit rosters don't reflect that.
I have been told that there is a distant surviving relative (on his side of the family), so I am going to make contact with and try to determine more about his service.
Again thank you for your research. As I stated in my initial posting, WWI is not an area that I have familiarity with. My forte has been WWII Aircraft Warning Service and Air Warning Radar units.
From one Colonel to another, Warm Regards and Thanks.
Dennis
Whelk 12
12th Commander of the 14th Military Intelligence Battalion (Tactical Exploitation)
