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Posted on 11/28/2025 10:00:01 PM PST by Cronos
His name was Geert Adriaans Boomgaard.
Born in 1788, he was a grumpy gentleman. And no one, in 1896, could blame him — at 108, Mr. Boomgaard had buried two wives, twelve children and more grandchildren than he could count. He had seen too much death, buried too many loved ones.
Born in 1788 in Groningen, Boomgaard was the son of a sea captain. And in 1812, at age 24, he enlisted in Napoleon’s Grande Armée. He wanted to see adventure, wanted to see the world. He stood with his comrades before the emperor. A sea of men, young men, hungry for glory. So many of them would never return home, dying in the doomed Russian adventure of Corsica’s most ambitious son.
Napoleon recruited in all the lands he had conquered and occupied; Spanish would serve with Spanish, Dutch with Dutch, Italians with Italians. This improved their camraderie, and made the youths feel close to one another. Young Geert served with men his age, who spoke his mother tongue. They could relate to one another, related to each other on a deep level and soon became thick as thieves.
Of nearly 600,000 troops to invade Russia, nearly 400,000 perished. Some deserted, some got taken prisoner and others died of diseases. Most of the men Geert served with died in the freezing cold, starved or fell victim to diseases, dying deaths that would have been perfectly preventable under normal circumstances.
When Geert came back, he did not speak of his experiences. He married, had eight children and became a seafarer like his father before him. When his wife died after giving birth to their eigth child, he remarried and had four more children with his second wife for a grand total of twelve. He felt a blessed man, but each of these children would die before sixty, the oldest of them dying at 57. By the time Mr. Boomgaard was 100, he had buried every single on his children, as well as both his wives…
It is no surprise that, in all the pictures I have seen of the old man, he looks absolutely miserable and depressed. Still, he was vain enough to put on what was very obviously a wig in every single photograph ever taken of him, covering his bald dome with what was supposed to look like natural human hair.
Boomgaard survived all his children, and many of his grandchildren as well. But in old age, he was blessed with several great-grandchildren. One of these, a young man by the name of Johan Christiaan Herman Winterwerp, was born in 1880 when the grizzled old veteran was 92. In his lonely old age, he received many visitors but was rather sullen and grumpy with most of them. Johan, his great-grandson, was one of the few who he could stomach to be around. The only one whose company he did not dread…
So in February 1899, when Geert was 110 years old and increasingly frail, he called for Johan. And he told his favorite descendant to look underneath his bed. In a box, neatly folded, Johan found Geert’s old uniform, and the medals he had received in service of Emperor Napoleon, 87 years prior…
Geert Adriaans Boomgaard passed away on February 3, 1899. He was 110 years old and the last known veteran of Napleon’s Grande Armée. When you look at his black and white photographs and meet his gaze, now forever stilled, you look into the eyes of the last man on God’s green earth who saw the Emperor Napoleon and marched with him.
Whenever the last survivor of any war dies, an era dies with him. A generation that once consisted of millions is reduced to zero. But before the last veteran breathes his final breath, before he closes his eyes for good, he is cursed to live life a living relic, a reminder of a past he can never access, friend and comrade to soldiers he can never meet again, rememberer of stories he can’t share with anyone who was there and knows what it was like…
All that is left now is a worn uniform, dull medals and ancient photographs of an ancient man, a man born when France was ruled by a King and the guillotine had not yet been invented. Napoleon died in 1821 and yet his name and memory echoed through the living memory of his men for nearly another eighty years.
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[The iron sword cut through the bronze with ease!]
Indeed. I imagine it was quite a surprise.
(Petrol. He would run out of fuel.)
😁😁😄
“citing Napoleon’s occupation of the capital as ineffective.”
Indeed, and he was wrong. In 1941 Moscow was the main objective. Guderian was right. Moscow was the center of the most centralized government on Earth. It was also the center of every transportation line in the Soviet Union. Take Moscow and the Soviet Union is effectively cut in half. Also the main industrial and population region of the Soviet Union.
Thanks for posting!
What evidence is there of that?
Regards,
He died exactly 60 years before Buddy Holly did.
[Apparently Adolf Hitler was no student of history.]
Whereas Hitler was fully supplied as he advanced. His problem was twofold - (1) his excessive haste wasted large numbers of German troops and (2) massive US resupply prevented a rerun of Germany’s WW1 victories over Russia. Instead of Russia being at a material disadvantage due to its poverty, US aid to Russia gave it something it lacked in WW1 - superior firepower.
Just… WOW!
Amazing article, thank you for posting it
Ping
Phenomenal photograph
I think it was Marshal Davout who said, "Too far." It was such a disaster almost from start (way too late in the year) to the finish.
Marching into Russia, a great many men died of sickness, thirst and exposure. The steppe is something no one anticipated and the late summer/early autumn conditions were almost like a desert. Many horses were lost as well, cavalry had no mounts and there was no proper way to be re fitted.
They outran their supply system (such as it was) and they almost immediately ceased to be an army on entering Moscow. They were a mob that over ran the city and command was not up to controlling the men.
Needless to say they began their retreat in the worst possible condition and it never improved.
his post was about a Saturday Night Live skit. Dan Akroyd was the pilot.
I was definitely a Frida guy.
Good point. If Moustach3 man had instead gone for a head shot at Moscow, following Napoleon, then he could have won, are you saying that?
I have not gamed that scenario in my head though.
Aleksander, thanks for calling me out on that. I was looking fir proof fir my statement, mostly around the fact that Slavic languages are SATEM like Indo Iranian and not CENTUM like Germanic and Italic.
But on digging I found that, while Slavic languages are SATEM, they are still phonologically and lexically closer to Germanic rather than indo Iranian.
So, I was wrong.
If you hadn’t pushed me for proof I would have continued believing what I said. Thank you for correcting me
👅😛😜😝 (that's a series of tongues, y'know, languages, not a double enton, entan, uh whatever, it's one of those seldom-seen single entendres)
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