The burial card of Private Michael Walsh, killed in action during World War I on Oct. 24, 1918. Walsh emigrated to the United States from rural Ireland in 1911.

100 years after his death, family of Irish immigrant WWI soldier receives his Purple Heart 

By Elizabeth McLaughlin
 via the ABC News web site

U.S. Army Pvt. Michael Walsh's family had waited over 100 years for this moment: the opportunity to honor their fallen hero.

Walsh, an immigrant from Ireland, served with the American Expeditionary Forces in France through some of the bloodiest fighting of World War I. He would be one of the last men in his company killed during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the fall of 1918 in which more than 26,000 Americans died.

It was just three days before his company was pulled back from the front lines.

"His Irish luck had just run out," Walsh's great-niece Finola O'Mahony wrote in a letter about his life, provided to ABC News by the non-profit group Purple Hearts Reunited which tracks down lost or stolen medals and returns them to families.

After Walsh's death, his family was never told details about what happened to him during the war. And although they did get a pension from the U.S. Army, they were never given the medals that Walsh so rightfully earned.

With the assistance of Purple Hearts Reunited, Walsh's nieces and nephews -- some now third generation -- gathered to receive his Purple Heart award in Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin on Friday. Though it was one of over 500 medals returned to veterans and their families in the organization's history, it was the first international reunification.

Read the entire article on the ABC News web site here:

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