America’s last World War I veteran dies
Rest in Peace Frank, we need more Americans like you.
Frank Buckles, the last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, has died. He was 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, 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.
Buckles lied about his age to join the army at age 16.The Missouri native was among nearly 5 million Americans who served in World War I in 1917 and 1918.
"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.
Buckles drove an ambulance during the war. The Washington Post said that with Buckles' death, only a 109-year-old Australian man and a 110-year-old British woman were believed to survive from the estimated 65 million people who served in the 1914-1918 war.
On Nov. 11, 2008, the 90th anniversary of the end of the war, Buckles attended a ceremony at the grave of World War I Gen. John Pershing in Arlington National Cemetery.
"I can see what they're honoring, the veterans of World War I," he told CNN. He was back in Washington a year later to endorse a proposal to rededicate the existing World War I memorial on the National Mall as the official National World War I Memorial. He told a Senate panel it was "an excellent idea." The memorial was originally built to honor District of Columbia's war dead.
Born in Missouri in 1901 and raised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of military recruiters after the United States entered the "war to end all wars" in April 1917. He was repeatedly rejected before convincing an Army captain he was 18. He was 16½.
"A boy of (that age), he's not afraid of anything. He wants to get in there," Buckles said.
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