Worthy Citation
A Distinguished Service on the Battle Front for Which No Honors Provision Has Been Made
There is a kind of heroism that never gets tagged. Many would not think it heroism. But when you come to analyze heroism into its elemental parts you find that it is a spiritual energy with myriad forms of expression, though these forms always have the character of self-dedication to an altruistic service. By that definition Capt. E. W. Zinn takes place in the ranks of war heroes; but if you have not seen what The Stars and Stripes—the official newspaper of the A. E. F., published in France—has said about him you probably never have heard of Capt. Zinn and his self-appointed mission. It is well to know about him; so here is the story as it appeared in the official organ:
“It was Captain Zinn, a veteran of the French Foreign Legion and the Lafayette Escadrille, who, when eager young American aviators, fresh from their training-camps, reported for duty where the fighting was, assigned them to squadrons and each to a particular airplane. Thus it was that he came to know them all. He sent them to their stations. He knew what ships they would pilot in combat in the air, on bombing expeditions, on reconnaissances over the lines.
“And now he seeks for those he sent out and who never returned. He asked that he might do it. If you talk to Captain Zinn about it, you know why he made the request. You know how he feels about that which he is doing. There is no mawkish sentiment about Captain Zinn.
“But deep down within him Captain Zinn feels that he and no other should go out on the mission that now engages him. He has an interest that is intimate and personal.
“Already, Captain Zinn’s quest has led him over the greater part of northern France and into Belgium and Germany. Through the torn fields and woods in the Verdun, Château-Thierry, St. Mihiel, and Meuse sectors he has gone. He has tramped through the Argonne to Sedan and sought in the mountains that encircle Metz and hide the valley of the Moselle. Wherever there was fighting in which the American Air Service participated, there has gone, or will go, Zinn.
“Out of 150 missing American aviators, Captain Zinn already has definitely located and identified the spots where seventy fell and were buried. It has required many days of painstaking search and inquiry to attain this result.
“Captain Zinn has found that in a great many cases American fliers were buried either by the Germans or by civilians with no mark of identification left on them.