November 19, 2007
Last of the Doughboys
A belated Armistice Day post, from the New York Times:
BY any conceivable measure, Frank Buckles has led an extraordinary life. Born on a farm in Missouri in February 1901, he saw his first automobile in his hometown in 1905, and his first airplane at the Illinois State Fair in 1907. At 15 he moved on his own to Oklahoma and went to work in a bank; in the 1940s, he spent more than three years as a Japanese prisoner of war. When he returned to the United States, he married, had a daughter and bought a farm near Charles Town, W. Va., where he lives to this day. He drove a tractor until he was 104.There are apparently two other survivors who were still in training Stateside when the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month rolled by in 1918. Yet isn't it remarkable that we have come to this with so little notice taken in recent years of the fast-dwindling numbers of surviving veterans? As the article notes:
But even more significant than the remarkable details of Mr. Buckles's life is what he represents: Of the two million soldiers the United States sent to France in World War I, he is the only one left.
. . . the passing of the last few veterans of the First World War is all but complete, and has gone largely unnoticed here.How was it when the last of the Civil War veterans passed from the scene? That would have been before my time, but when my parents were young adults. The '50s were more a time of looking forward than of looking back, though, which really only changed, from what I understand, with the Civil War centennial in 1965.Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. Almost from the moment the armistice took effect, the United States has worked hard, it seems, to forget World War I; maybe that's because more than 100,000 Americans never returned from it, lost for a cause that few can explain even now. The first few who did come home were given ticker-tape parades, but most returned only to silence and a good bit of indifference. . .
A few years ago, I set out to see if I could find any living American World War I veterans. No one -- not the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the Veterans of Foreign Wars, or the American Legion -- knew how many there were or where they might be. As far as I could tell, no one much seemed to care, either.
Posted by David on November 19, 2007 12:28 PM
I have a copy of my dad's Bluejacket's Manual from the 50's. That's the handbook all sailors get when they join the navy. In the list of medals and ribbons, in the only color section in the book, is a picture of the Civil War medal. It was blue on one side and gray on the other. I always wondered who was wearing that in the 1950's and whether you could wear it if you fought on the losing side.
Posted by: Skyler on November 19, 2007 5:34 PM
In the late-mid 1930s as a boy of 7-9 I was watching a Memorial Day or July Fourth parade on Rockaway Boulevard in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens New York when some adult nearby said "Here's the GAR!". She was referring to two Civil War vets sitting in the back of an open automobile dressed in their blue Army uniforms. Old men, smiling and waving.
The GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) was the name of the Union veterans organization. The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan is located on Grand Army Plaza which contains a statue of Sherman.
Posted by: James on November 20, 2007 8:22 AM
I remember when the last Civil War veteran died. It was covered pretty extensively in the press. I was young at the time, but I recall that he had fought for the Confederacy.
So yeah, there was more public interest and news coverage of that matter.
Posted by: Lars Walker on November 20, 2007 9:04 AM
I do recall reading of regular reunions of Civil War vets at 25 and 50 years after the end of that horrific war--losses in major battles would be 25,000 killed in a day or two. That these men survived and joined with each other in rebuilding the Nation, depite the ups and downs of that process, is a testement to their greatness and reflects well on Mr. Lincoln's will to preserve the Nation.
My Grandfather was already a very old man when I was born and a refugee from fascist Hungary in 1928. He foughtthrough all of WW I, but with the Austro-Hungarian cavalry, from 1914-1918. It is ironic that 100,000 Americans died in that stupid war to end all wars, and in just that year or so from 1917-1918, a loss rate about as high as the Civil WAr and far worse than WW II, Korea or Viet Nam. It alsways struck me as ironic that his two sons, my uncles, although too old to be drafted, lied about their ages and joined the Army in WW II to fight against the Nazis in Africa and Europe, in part with Patton. And now three of my children serve again in defense of our Nation.
We are losing this generation of heros at the rate of 1000 or more a day now. Indeed the price of freedom is great and we must remember that and teach that to our children and their children.
Posted by: Donald Wolberg on November 21, 2007 9:09 AM
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