Frank Buckles – the last surviving American veteran of World War I – has rejoined the rest of his comrades. He passed away yesterday, age 110.
Buckles, who also survived being a civilian POW in the Philippines in World War II, died peacefully of natural causes early Sunday at his home in Charles Town [West Virginia], biographer and family spokesman David DeJonge said in a statement. Buckles turned 110 on Feb. 1 and had been advocating for a national memorial honoring veterans of World War I in Washington, D.C.
There are two known WWI survivors left in the world; an Australian man and a British woman, 109 and 110 respectively.
Buckles in 1917 and 2007 - via NBC
Buckled certainly had an action-packed life:
Buckles served in England and France, working mainly as a driver and a warehouse clerk. The fact he did not see combat didn’t diminish his service, he said: “Didn’t I make every effort?”
An eager student of culture and language, he used his off-duty hours to learn German, visit cathedrals, museums and tombs, and bicycle in the French countryside…
…In 1941, while on business in the Philippines, Buckles was captured by the Japanese. He spent 3½ years in prison camps.
“I was never actually looking for adventure,” Buckles once said. “It just came to me.”
I’d often wondered; what must it be like to be the last of…any group, much less a group of nearly five million?
“I knew there’d be only one (survivor) someday. I didn’t think it would be me,” he was quoted as saying in recent years.
RIP, Frank Buckles.
It’s difficult to conceive all the wondrous things this gentleman saw in his 110 years. Or all the horrible stuff he would have witnessed during wartime. God Bless Doughboy, RIP.
Duluth’s Al Woolson was the last Union veteran (1 confederate outlived him). Died at age 109 in 1956. They say he was very sharp, right up to the end.
If the youngest WW2 vets were 18 in 1945, they would be about 84 today.
Chuck,
You have the math correct. A few lied about their ages; they’d be in their early eighties.
Back in 2007, at the dedication of the MN World War 2 memorial, I met a lot of old guys; I wrote about it back then.
It’s about as sobering to realize that the youngest Holocaust survivors – the smattering of young children that survived the camps – are all in their mid-seventies.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.” Gen. George S. Patton
Rest in honored glory among those that went before you and those that will come after you, Frank Buckles.
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