Louis V. Girard, A&M College of Texas class of 1943, KIA August 1, 1943, during Operation TIDAL WAVE, a bombing raid against the oil refineries around Ploieti, Romania

Louis was a member of C Company Infantry as pictured in the 1941 Longhorn.

Per the March 20, 1941, Battalion newspaper, Louis had applied and been accepted into the Royal Canadian Air Force, as he was rejected by the US Air Corps due to bad teeth!

First Lieutenant Girard entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Texas and served in the 68th Bombardment Squadron, 44th Bombardment Group. On August 1, 1943, Operation TIDAL WAVE, a bombing raid against the oil refineries around Ploieti, Romania, was launched.

One hundred and seventy-seven B-24 Liberators took off from bases in Libya, for the raid. 1LT Girard was the copilot of one Liberator (serial number 42-40995), nicknamed "Satan's Hell Cats", one of fifty-one planes that failed to return. Witnesses reported that "Satan's Hell Cats" sustained damage from anti-aircraft fire over the target. The plane then caught fire and crashed about two miles from the target, killing all nine men on board.

1LT Girard's remains were not identified following the war. Operation TIDAL WAVE, while successfully damaging the Ploieti oil refineries, cost the lives of hundreds of USAAF airmen, many of whom were interred by Romanian citizens in the Bolovan Cemetery in Ploieti.

During postwar operations there, the American Graves Registration Command exhumed unknown remains that were eventually reinterred at American military cemeteries. In 2017, DPAA began exhuming those unknowns for comparison with the unaccounted-for airmen lost during Operation TIDAL WAVE. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established an association between one set of these unknown remains and 1LT Girard.

First Lieutenant Girard is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Florence American Cemetery in Impruneta, Italy.