Ninety-two years later, the World War I doughboy has come home to a hero's welcome. His unmarked grave was found in 2006, and his remains were identified through dental records.
Weikel will receive full military honors during his interment at 11 a.m. Thursday at Indiantown Gap Cemetery in Annville, Pa.
Remarkably, Weikel is one of only five soldiers from that war who have been identified by a special Defense Department unit that has accounted for missing Americans since the Vietnam War, a spokesman said.
"It's very unusual," said Weikel's great-niece Debra Coleman, 48, of the Shenandoah section of Schuylkill County, daughter of Weikel's niece Rose Mary Wesner of Frackville, Pa. "I couldn't believe it. I was shocked.
"It's amazing what they were able to do to identify him after all this time."
Weikel's identification was made by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, which oversees JPAC.
Only four soldiers and one Marine from World War I have been identified, compared with hundreds from other wars.
At least 1,700 are still missing from the Vietnam War, 125 from the Cold War, 8,000 from Korea, and 78,000 from World War II, Greer said.
There's no database of the missing from World War I, but the Defense Department still has dental records that allowed officials to identify Weikel's remains.
They contacted Wesner, 80, with the stunning news about three months ago.
She wasn't sure what to make of it, Coleman said. Her mother's Uncle Henry had died 12 years before her mother was born.
"But she said she's glad that he's finally being laid to rest," said Coleman, whose mother will be unable to attend the service because of ill health.
"He had been killed by the Germans and buried there, but the marker on the grave was destroyed by more fighting," Coleman said.
