The word came in a short news item buried in the middle of the local paper: Frank Buckles, the last surviving American veteran from World War I, had died at the age of 110. He was actually too young to enlist when the United States entered the war in 1917, but nonetheless he tried to join the Marines and Navy, and was promptly rejected because of his age, his slight build, or the fact that he was flat-footed.
When confronted about his youthful looks by recruiters, he had sworn to them that he was eighteen and had only forgotten to bring his birth certificate that was sitting in the family Bible at home. The recruiters would simply laugh and send the disappointed young man back to his parents. Not to be deterred, the 16-year-old then decided one day to stretch the bounds of absurdity and, instead of insisting that he was a mere 18, informed the recruiter that he was, in fact, 21. Somehow, it worked, and Frank Buckles became a Doughboy on August 14, 1917.
He journeyed to France and served as an ambulance and motorcycle driver. At the outbreak of World War II, while working for a shipping company in the Philippines, he was captured by the Japanese and spent the duration of the war in a prisoner of war camp, falling below 100 pounds and suffering from beriberi until finally being liberated by allied forces in February 1945.
Frank Buckles thus survived two world wars and lived on to such an advanced age that he, out of the millions of other comrades in arms, would become that special one known to his country as the Last Doughboy. With his passing, they are now all finally gone, all those young men who heeded the patriotic call to arms in a particularly jingoistic time so long ago. They came from all over the country then, farmers and steel workers, grocery clerks and miners, and exchanged their civilian clothes for their tin hats and wrapped leggings and set off to confront the Kaiser and the “Huns” who had encroached for long enough into Western Europe.
One of those young Doughboys now stares at me every night as I make my way upstairs to bed. My grandfather, Russell Case, was a combat engineer in the Army’s 76th Division out of New England. He served in France, and went into harm’s way at Saint-Mihiel when he was ordered to crawl forward towards enemy lines and blow up barbed wire emplacements. Fortunately, he was never hurt, but family legend has it that he and his buddies did have to hide out in a cemetery on the night before the Armistice in order to ensure that they would make it home alive.
Now, Grandpa Russell adorns the wall at home in a framed black and white photo from the time of his military service. He sits comfortably for the photographer in an ill-fitting Army tunic with brass buttons and a single chevron on his forearm denoting his modest rank of private. On his head, he sports the angled garrison cap popular in the era, and on the youthful face one can detect the faintest smile, a smile of a very young man who is obviously proud of his service and pleased to sit for an official portrait in his uniform.
Grandpa Russell was a Doughboy just like Frank Buckles, a fact of which I am extremely proud. But he was more than just a Doughboy; he is my Doughboy, a very personal and real link to a distant past that has become almost mythical to us in its grainy black and white images and its fading tributes.
Now, we are slowly saying goodbye to the more than 16 million American men and women who served their country so ably and selflessly in World War II. Someday, the very last GI, or the last Marine, or airman or seaman from that second, greater and more cataclysmic war will pass on, too, and will leave us only with the photographs and testimonials and histories telling us of their great and crucial sacrifices during that terrible time. If I am alive when that day comes, it will be a hard day.
Sean Moynihan is a deputy district attorney in Denver.
Editor’s note. This is an online-only guest commentary. It has not been edited.
