Feb 28,2011 [b]: Last US WW1 vet dies
 

http://cellar.org/2011/frankbuckles.jpg

Bullitt suggests this one and, although there haven't been enough IotDs recently, I figured we should make this the "B" image for Feb 28. The passage of time has already gone too long.

The CNN story gives us the details. Frank Buckles died of natural causes. He was 110 years old, born on February 1, 1901.

Buckles is the last WW1 tough guy, and how tough he must have been.

4,734,991 is a remarkable number. I had no idea it was that many. At the time there were only about 100,000,000 people in the entire country, so about 1 in 20 served in an overseas war, at a time when it wasn't so easy to travel overseas. And so many died. Many nations suffered worse losses, but 1918 marks the only year in US history since 1900 when the population of the US actually dropped.

Which makes Buckles' final rest even that much more remarkable. Here is a gentleman who was born only two generations after the US Civil War. We salute you Sir, Rest in Peace.

Amazing. The end of an era.

I remember as a kid, watching parades and seeing vets marching and you'd have a bunch of people for WWII, and just a handful of old men slowly marching along for the WWI group. Now they are all gone. It's sad.

From The Pogues "Waltzing Matilda":

"And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all"

The Pogues did a decent cover of Eric Bogle's "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda".

Bogle, recently retired from performing I believe, is a wonderful storyteller. Seek out more of his work.

I knew I had run into the name Eric Bogle before, but had to go looking to figure it out.

He wrote "If Wishes Were Fishes" an excellent tune which I first heard on the North Sea Gas Keltic Heritage CD.

My mom and I always get teary-eyed at the vets in the parades. I'll have to ask her about her memory of WWI vets. Her uncle was killed in WWII, but I bet there is some WWI history from our family she could tell me about too.

Very sad indeed. And so many died in World War 1, the whole thing is just almost unfathomable.

Thanks for posting this UT. It was buried under all the Oscars bullshit on CNN.com and almost missed it myself. As far as I'm concerned this should be headline news on every outlet in America. He is the last one. The last one. Our country no longer has any living connection to the soldiers of WWI.

Good call.

I don't know who thought up that number of servicemen in Europe, but it's grossly too high.

About 300,000, but add in the Navy and Marines, and it would be closer to 420,00 or so. Not 4.7 million. :eek:

the dramatic loss of Americans was not from WWI, but from the "Spanish Flu" epidemic, that swept around the world in waves. That epidemic killed more people, and more soldiers, than the war did.

The number killed and injured was exceptionally high even so. The tactics used were those of the civil war - against machine guns, modern artillery, and repeating rifles - and poison gas was used, as well. Good example was the attack by the British/Aussies, at Gallipoli, against the defending Turks. Sheer disaster that one. :mad:

But soldiers are people too.

answers.com is not a reliable source. Try a .mil site like here.

The
Very
Last
One...



A few weeks ago I was downtown in my podunk little city of 50k. I saw an obelisk I hadn't really noticed before. On examining it I was surprised to see it was a WWI memorial to the fallen solders from our town. There were more than fifty names on it! I was pretty stunned thinking how many solders must've bought it in that war for my town, which must've only had about 7,000 then, to have lost that many.

In uniform during the war? Yes.

In Europe, or a War Zone during the war? divide by 10 (about 450,000)

The original quote was "Buckles' family asks that donations be made to the National World War I Legacy Project to honor Frank Buckles and the 4,734,991 Americans that he served with during World War I."

If that number served during WW1, then he served with them. The non-combatants also served their country.