Maybe you heard about it yesterday, Frank Buckles (110) died over the weekend. Frank was considered the last living American veteran of WWI. While two other veterans from that period are still alive, they arrived in France between the Armistice and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Buckles volunteered to be an ambulance driver to get over there quicker. About his enlistment in the Army Frank is quoted:
I was just 16 and didn’t look a day older. I confess to you that I lied to more than one recruiter. I gave them my solemn word that I was 18, but I’d left my birth certificate back home in the family Bible. They’d take one look at me and laugh and tell me to go home before my mother noticed I was gone. Somehow I got the idea that telling an even bigger whopper was the way to go. So I told the next recruiter that I was 21 and darned if he didn’t sign me up on the spot! I enlisted in the Army on 14 August 1917.
After the war, Frank accepted overseas assignments with international companies and ended up in Manila when the Japanese occupied the Philippines in WWII and he spent the war as a civilian POW. After the war, he returned to San Francisco and eventually retired to West Virginia.
Buckles became the honorary chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation that is seeking to build a WWI memorial on the Capital Mall similar to the WWII, Korea and Viet Nam memorials there.
We Salute you Corporal Buckles
For your love of country,
For your service,
And, for proving you don’t need a birth certificate to do great things for America.
Rest In Peace
Note: I'm not sure if this qualifies for an IGTNT tag, feel free to add it.