Place the Headstones
Place the Headstones
Place the Headstones Where They Belong
Sherman L. Fleek

5 1/2 x 8 1/2, 184 pages
maps and photos

Published: 2008

ISBN 978-0-87421-695-0
cloth $29.95

ISBN 978-0-87421-696-7
e-book $23.00

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Sherman Fleek is the author of History May Be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion.

Place the Headstones Where They Belong

Thomas Neibaur, WWI Soldier

Sherman L. Fleek

Tom, rest in peace. . . . Your light will shine brightly sometime in the future when a history is written that will sift the worthy from the worthless and place the headstones where they belong.
—Vardis Fisher, January 4, 1943

After a long journey from Sugar City, Idaho, to the Argonne Forest, France, during World War I, young Thomas Neibaur found himself in the core of the American Expeditionary Force's most important offensive. After becoming separated in advance of his unit, he, despite serious wounds, single-handedly stopped a German counterattack at a critical hill known as Cote de Chatillon. For this remarkable feat of valor, he received the Medal of Honor and other awards, becoming the first Idahoan and first Mormon recipient of the nation's highest combat award. But after a heroic return and brief celebrity, his life followed a tragic downward arc, culminating in his attempt to return his medal because, as he put it, it could not feed his family.