CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. — World War I took place so long ago, in a lost world of cavalry horses and biplanes, that it’s a little startling to meet Frank Buckles in the flesh.
The last known U.S. military veteran of World War I, Buckles turns 108 today.
On Tuesday, as a winter storm moved in from the west, he sat in a nice blue blazer in a warm corner of his day room, surrounded by history books. Outside, white wisps blew across the pale stubble on the 330-acre cattle farm where he settled quietly in 1954 after what already had been a life’s worth of adventure in not one but two wars and as a commercial seafarer.
Buckles said he had always known he would grow quite old. His father lived to be 97. He had a sister who was 104. Other relatives on his mother’s side lived to be 100.
The national World War I veterans group, of which he is the commander and sole member, used to publish a newsletter. Each issue counted down the number of old doughboys still around.
As the number got smaller and smaller, “I realized I’d be one of the last,” he said, “but I never thought I’d be ‘the last.’ ”
He grinned slowly and added, “Of course, if it has to be somebody, it might as well be me.”
On Nov. 11, the 90th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs recognized Buckles as “our last living link” to that war. Buckles met President George W. Bush at the White House last year and was feted at the Pentagon.
He seems to have enjoyed the attention, but he isn’t eager to talk about the sadness and melancholy that must come with being the last of 4,734,991 American military personnel during the war, in 1917 and 1918.
“Being the last is sort of a negative thing because it means all your buddies have gone before you, so he doesn’t dwell on that,” said Muriel Sue Kerr of Mount Vernon, Va., the longtime director of Buckles’ veterans group and the granddaughter of a World War I veteran.
Until he was in his 70s, Buckles each month smoked a pound of pipe tobacco and a box of cigars. He drove a car and a tractor until he was 102.
A couple of years ago, his only child, Susannah, 53, moved in with him.
