Frank Buckles, Last Veteran Of WWI Dies At 110
Frank Buckles, the man who saw the entire world changing in the two great wars (google.com/hostednews)
The last U.S. Veteran of the First Great War died on Sunday, sadly but expectedly at the age of 110.
The great man, Frank Buckles, served in the World War I, even though he was only 16 of age when the United States entered the war in April 1917. “I knew what was happening in Europe, even though I was quite young,” he told a Washington Post reporter when he was 105. “And I thought, well, ‘I want to get over there and see what it’s about.” Although the marines and the navy turned him down because of his age, he managed to convince the army that he was 21 and so he got on the boat that had previously saved the people on Titanic and went straight into the war that killed more than 8.5 billion had died. The war in which so many things were destroyed aside of the material stuff. But Mr. Frank Buckles got out of the war safe and sound and he got a chance to return back home. The home described very well by Ernest Hemingway. He went back home to his dearly United States, where he found actually nothing.
If anyone of you has ever read Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home,” you probably know what the poor man must have felt when everyone he knew and everything he knew before going to war had changed so drastically. For those who do not remember, the 20s are known as the “Roaring” years, especially because of the way of life that people lead. For a soldier who has been part of the horrible war, it must not be easy to try and grasp the everyday life. What he felt? Alienation, most probably. Although Europe was the “center of attention” for most American artists, those who were left back home in the States went through serious problems due to the Great Depression. Frank Buckles lived to see all these, to be part of every new thing. He saw the great transformations in matters of technology and of ways of living. He was there for all these things.
Then, of course, there came the World War II, which was even worse for the United States. As most of us remember from our history lessons, it all started with the attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, which was a surprise attack that came from the Japanese, which ultimately took the United States in World War II. Mr. Frank Buckles was there for the war too, and in 1942 when Manila was captured by the Japanese, he was there and he was taken prisoner. Three years he spent in the prison camp and what he remembered in an interview given a few years back was that they were left there to starve. “The experience in the camp — the bad part was the starvation,” Mr. Buckles said. After the war was done and Hitler was defeated, he returned back home to marry and start his own family on a cattle farm in West Virginia, where he only wanted to live a quite life. Moreover, he was awarded with many honors by more than one President and according to his words, “I always knew I’d be one of the last because I was one of the youngest when I joined,” Buckles told the New York Daily News when he was 107 of age. “But I never thought I’d be the last one.”
Mr. Frank Buckles survived his dear wife, who always took care of him and loved him and who died some years back, but he is survived by his daughter, Susannah Buckles Flanagan, who together with her husband are now taking care of Mr. Buckles’ beloved home in West Virginia.
