Charles Langel, 6th Ohio Volunteer Infantry

It seems fitting that I'm spending Memorial Day looking into the military service of Charles Langel, my great-grandfather.  I found his cemetery marker during my trip to Ohio:

and look at that little marker stuck in the ground.  Here...let me get you a closer look:

Apparently, he served in the military.  I didn't know!

Ancestry.com has some more information.  He served in the Ohio National Guard for several years, and then joined the 6th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in 1898.  He was the captain of Company E during their stays in Tennessee and Georgia, and when they were to sent to Cuba for about 4 months.  Ancestry has a scanned "war album" of this year of active duty, which has lots of lovely information, but it is incredibly frustrating -- it's a picture book, but the scans of the pictures are all high contrast and, therefore, useless. I wish they would rescan in grayscale so we can see those pictures of camp kitchens and Thanksgiving dinner and the company prank!

Well, I'm off to order a pension file.  I also need to find out why we were sending soldiers to Cuba in 1898...