Taps

The last known US veteran of the First World War died Sunday at age 110.

In 1917 Frank W. Buckles lied about his age to enlist in the army at 16, looking for adventure. He drove ambulances and found blood, mud and ugliness.

He got his adventure later, when he signed on as purser for a freighter. But that led to ugliness, as well—he was in Manila when the Japanese invaded in 1941, spent more than three years in prison camps and was rescued during the airborne raid on Los Baños in 1945.

Buckles’ generation never got the attention the World War II vets did, at least here in the US. The last two British soldiers from 1914-18 died in 2009; Harry Patch’s funeral was held in Wells Cathedral, with full honors and military representatives of Britain, Germany, France and Belgium. I don’t know what plans there are for Buckles, except that he’ll be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

I’ve met two soldiers from that war—one was a guest of honor at a Smithsonian lecture I attended in 1996. He was in a wheelchair and spoke very slowly, but his brain was as sharp as they come, even in his tenth decade.

The second I interviewed early in my reporter days—when my job was mostly to rewrite press releases. The city room received a mimeographed (yes, that long ago) announcement with the blanks handwritten about the election of this fellow to some office in a local service organization. To my utter chagrin I can’t recall his name and I can’t find a copy of the story I wrote, but I recall my interaction with him.

He was Scottish and had served in the trenches of the Western Front, part of the Gordon Highlanders. He told me it was awful and the only thing that got him through was the daily rum ration. Following the war he moved to Chicago and became a sheet metal worker. When the US entered the second war he was 49½ years old, and he upper limit for the Sea Bees was 50. He served in the outfit for six months in the Pacific.

And he told me John Wayne’s “The Fighting Sea Bees” was complete rubbish.

He was in his 80s when I spoke with him, and had only recently married for the first time. When I asked him why he replied, “Ooch, I was shy.”

Well, they’re gone, now. There’s one British soldier (in Australia) and one non-combatant woman in England. All the soldiers of the war to end all wars fading away.