the rix mix

Last World War I veteran Frank W. Buckles dies at 110
By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer

Frank W. Buckles died early Sunday, sadly yet not unexpectedly at age 110, having achieved a singular feat of longevity that left him proud and a bit bemused.

In 1917 and 1918, close to 5 million Americans served in World War I, and Mr. Buckles, a cordial fellow of gentle humor, was the last known survivor. "I knew there'd be only one someday," he said a few years back. "I didn't think it would be me."

His daughter, Susannah Buckles Flanagan, said Mr. Buckles, a widower, died of natural causes on his West Virginia farm, where she had been caring for him.

Buckles' distant generation was the first to witness the awful toll of modern, mechanized warfare. As time thinned the ranks of those long-ago U.S. veterans, the nation hardly noticed them vanishing, until the roster dwindled to one ex-soldier, embraced in his final years by an appreciative public.

With his death, researchers said, only two of the approximately 65 million people mobilized by the world's militaries during the Great War are known to be alive: an Australian man, 109, and a British woman, 110 .

Read the entire obituary story.  Buckles wasn't a combat vet, but an ambulance driver, which must have been nearly as horrifying.  He was imprisoned as a civilian by Japanese in the Philippines during WWII, experiencing tremendous hardship.  He was truly "a national treasure."

Coincidentally, a 20-year-old poem of mine, "November 11," was printed for the first time this past week.*  It includes the lines:

Armistice Day
a wreath quietly appeared
beneath a World War One statue
on the corner of Chestnut & Clay

That war monument makes an appearance in a number of my poems. I passed it every school day from Kindergarten to high school graduation.

I was born on the anniversary of WWI Armistice Day, now Veterans Day, when it was still named Armistice Day. The old folks never stopped calling it Armistice Day.

When I was  a kid, the older WWI vets were  already passing on.  Some vets attended the Memorial Day wreath-laying ritual at the statue wearing their quaint old uniforms with the "Montana Peak" hats.

They were a wonderful generation of Americans. They fought for their country in one of the deadliest, most absurd wars in history; had to fight for their veterans benefits afterward only to be  hit by The Great Depression & then see their "War to End All Wars" become the prelude to a war that was even worse.  

* I wasn't hiding the poem. Just never got around to submitting it for publication. Poet David Cope read it online & requested it for his magazine, Big Scream. Recently, the editor of another print mag snapped up an old poem I posted on the internet.

Labels: growing up, obituary