Happy Veterans Day and

[Pearl]

Thank you

 

[Canadiens1131]

Remembering all veterans past and present today.

Not of one country but of the world.

Hopefully one day this will only be a day to remember the fallen robot desert crawlers and their laser eyes of doom.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

Remembering all veterans past and present today.

Not of one country but of the world.

Hopefully one day this will only be a day to remember the fallen robot desert crawlers and their laser eyes of doom.

This. Nicely said .

Angela

 

[yolland]

How many living WW1 vets does America have left? In Britain we have 3 aged 108,110 and 112 i think it was. Just curious.

Only one, a 107-year-old West Virginian who shipped off to Europe at 16 (lied about his age to be allowed in). He was a POW in WWII as well.

In the US, the draft age was 21 until August 1918, which may have something to do with why we've had fewer surviving WWI veterans than other combatant countries for several years now.

New York Times, Feb. 28

Frank Buckles, who drove an Army ambulance in France in 1918 and came to symbolize a generation of embattled young Americans as the last of the World War I doughboys, died on Sunday at his home in Charles Town, West Virginia. He was 110. Frail, stooped and hard of hearing, but sharp of mind, Mr. Buckles was named grand marshal of the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington in 2007. Sought out for interviews in his final years, Mr. Buckles told of witnessing a ceremony involving British veterans of the Crimean War, fought in the 1850s, when he was stationed in England before heading to France. He remembered chatting with General John J. Pershing, the commander of American troops in World War I, at an event in Oklahoma City soon after the war’s end.

Frank Woodruff Buckles was born Feb. 1, 1901, on a farm near Bethany, Missouri. He was living in Oakwood, Oklahoma, when America entered World War I and he tried to enlist in the Marine Corps at age 16, having been inspired by recruiting posters. The Marines turned him down as under-age and under the required weight. The Navy didn’t want him either, saying he had flat feet. But the Army took him in August 1917 after he had lied about his age, and he volunteered to be an ambulance driver, hearing that that was the quickest path to service in France. He sailed for England in December 1917 on the Carpathia, the ship that helped save survivors of the Titanic’s sinking in 1912. He later served in various locations in France, including Bordeaux, and drove military autos and ambulances. He was moved by the war’s impact on the French people. “The little French children were hungry,” Mr. Buckles recalled in a 2001 interview for the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress. “We’d feed the children. To me, that was a pretty sad sight.”...More than eight decades after World War I ended, Mr. Buckles retained images of his French comrades. And he thought back to the fate that awaited them. “What I have a vivid memory of is the French soldiers—being in a small village and going in to a local wine shop in the evening,” he told a Library of Congress interviewer. “They had very, very little money. But they were having wine and singing the ‘Marseillaise’ with enthusiasm. And I inquired, ‘What is the occasion?’ They were going back to the front. Can you imagine that?”

Mr. Buckles escorted German prisoners of war back to their homeland after the Armistice, then returned to America and later worked in the Toronto office of the White Star shipping line. He traveled widely over the years, working for steamship companies, and he was on business in Manila when the Japanese occupied it following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. He was imprisoned by the Japanese, losing more than 50 pounds, before being liberated by an American airborne unit in February 1945. After retiring from steamship work in the mid-1950s, Mr. Buckles ran a cattle farm in Charles Town, and he was still riding a tractor there at age 104.

...Claude Choules, who served in Britain’s Royal Navy and now lives in Australia, and Florence Green, a member of Britain’s Women’s Royal Air Force and who lives in England, are thought to be the only two people still living who served in any capacity in the war.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

110 years old. Wow.

Certainly lived a long, full life. Impressive that his memory was sharp to the very end, too. Much thanks for his service, and may he rest in peace.

That last sentence in the bit you quoted there is quite amazing, too.

Angela

 

[the iron horse]

The news report I read said he was the last American veteran and that all the French and German veterans have passed on.

Just wondering if he was the last or if there are any veterans still alive in Great Britain?