Obama honors American WWI dead at Flanders Field

Pvt. Wesley Creech could no longer hide the darkness of his thoughts as he longed for his wife Carzetta and 5-month-old daughter Marie: "If I never see you and Marie any more in this life I hope to meet you in a Better Place," he wrote in a letter on Aug. 24, 1918 — as the American army moved fast to repel the Germans on the Western Front during World War I.

One week later he was killed by an enemy bullet in the head.

Today, "Wesley J. Creech North Carolina" is chiseled in gold letters on the Wall of the Missing in the chapel at the heart of the Flanders Field cemetery.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama will honor the Americans who died in an epic struggle so horrific that it came simply to be known as the Great War. Obama's wreath-laying ceremony precedes most of the continental centennial remembrances that are targeted at the early August 1914 start of hostilities, which pitted the German and Austro-Hungarian empires against France, Britain, Russia and others....