St. Agatha man finally receives war decorations> After 80 years, Army veteran is recognized as WWI hero

LIMESTONE — Eighty years after a St. Agatha man was wounded three times during World War I, his daughter was presented with his medals by the U.S. Army and the American government.

On Tuesday, Donat Boucher, who died in 1968, was posthumously presented the Purple Heart with two oak leaf clusters and the World War I Victory Medal with the Aisne-Marne Clasp, the St. Mihiel Clasp and the Meuse-Argonne Clasp, representing battles. The medals were presented by Gov. Angus King and Maj. Gen. Earl L. Adams, adjutant general of the Maine Army National Guard in ceremonies at the Loring Center of Excellence.

The medals were accepted by Doris Boucher Morneault of Madawaska, one of Boucher’s two children.

During the ceremony, Col. Philip Michaud, retired, an acquaintance of Boucher, remembered the World War I soldier as “a common man who served his country in a very uncommon way.

“Where else but in America can we find such great men?” Michaud said. “Donat Boucher was a brave man.”

The ceremony was held outside at a National Guard facility on the former Loring Air Force Base. Speakers were framed by two large military guns, with a Huey helicopter in the background.

Morneault thanked the 50 civilians and about 30 military men at the ceremony. Many in the crowd, which included former soldiers, wore military hats, several of them the purple hats signifying the wearers also were holders of the Purple Heart medal.

At the age of 23, Boucher, who grew up in St. Agatha in a family of 10 children, joined the Maine Army National Guard on June 17, 1917, and was mobilized almost immediately to Europe. He received basic training at Fort Keyes in Augusta and further training in England before being deployed to France. Within three months of joining, Boucher was on a troop ship to Europe.

Adams said Boucher was part of the 103rd Infantry Regiment of the 26th Yankee Division, whose lineage goes all the way back to Gen. Joshua Chamberlains’s 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The regiment played a decisive role at the battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War.

A woodsman in northern Maine, Boucher was involved in some of Europe’s most bitter battles, including Chemin des Dames, Toul Sector, the battle of the Marne, and Meuse Argonne, in France.

The soldier was wounded three times in 1918, on June 18, Sept. 12 and Nov. 8. He heard of the armistice on Nov. 11 while recovering from his wounds in a military hospital.

Boucher returned home to Aroostook County on Jan. 24, 1919. He is buried in his hometown cemetery in St. Agatha.

Due to an oversight, the soldier was never awarded the medals he had earned. His daughter and her husband, Martin Morneault of Madawaska, discovered the error and worked with military authorities to have the medals given to the family.

“Military bureaucracy takes a while to work sometime; in this case, 80 years,” Adams admitted on Tuesday.

Adams said it is rare in the military that a soldier gets three Purple Hearts.

“This citizen soldier did. We are honoring a hero here today,” the major general said.

Col. Michaud of St. Agatha, who received two Purple Hearts for wounds he suffered in Vietnam, said, “The recipients of Purple Hearts are in a class all their own. They have experienced the horrors of war. They came close to paying the ultimate sacrifice, and they are grateful to live another day.

“It’s too bad he [Boucher] did not have the opportunity to wear his Purple Hearts in Memorial Day parades in which he proudly marched for years,” Michaud said.

King said Boucher’s medals “are a piece of St. Agatha’s history. He is getting his due, 80 years late. He earned honors so long ago, so far away.

“These [medals] are outward signs of an inward and spiritual bravery,” the governor commented.