AP Photo
Posted on 11/11/2003 11:58:52 AM PST by NormsRevenge
CARSON CITY, Nev. - Reuben Law, 105, credits good heart genes and lifelong outdoor activity for his apparent status as Nevada's last remaining veteran of World War I. At 102, Frank Buckles still works the fields and drives a tractor at his family farm near Charles Town, W.Va. The two are among fewer than 200 surviving U.S. veterans of the Great War out of 4.7 million who served.
"I'm pretty rickety, but I still get along," Law said at his Carson City home as he reminisced about his stint as an Army sergeant, hauling supplies or transporting soldiers shattered by bombs and bullets to a military hospital near the village of Allerey in eastern France.
The duty was grim, but Law downplays his service overseas from October 1918 to July 1919.
"I had the easy part of the war," he said. "We could hear the big artillery in the distance, but we were never near it."
After enlisting in Minneapolis, where he worked at a Ford plant assembling Model T's, Law almost died en route to Europe. A flu outbreak killed more than 60 other soldiers on the ship that brought him to France.
"I just barely made it," he said. "I didn't want to go to the hospital, which was a mistake. But it worked out."
Law's best memory of the war was its end, Armistice Day.
"We loaded up a bunch of us in a camion (truck) and we went into Allerey to celebrate, and every girl that we went by gave you a kiss. They were so relieved about the war," he said.
Looking at framed mementos of his Army service — his sergeant's stripes, dog tags, the Legion of Honor medal that France awarded him in 1999 — Law said "I was doing something that needed to be done. I got through it without too much difficulty."
Buckles, a native of Harrison County, Mo., was 16 when he enlisted in the Army in 1917. "It was a very important thing going on. I wanted to participate," he said.
Buckles had various assignments in France, where he recalled, "Everybody was in mourning. ... You felt that it was a very serious situation."
He remembers getting food for hungry children who came to his military camp.
"Wherever you'd find soldiers, you'd find children," Buckles said. "You were inclined to give them whatever you could."
Some of the memories are lighter.
He recalled sitting at the bar of a hotel that catered to Europe's aristocracy, where he overheard some women complaining about the presence of an American enlisted man.
A Russian prince entered the room, heard of the complaint and seeing the young corporal said: "He's conducting himself as a gentleman. He may stay there as long as he wishes."
"That put them back," Buckles said, laughing.
After the war ended Nov. 11, 1918, Buckles helped escort POWs back to Germany and later worked in the steamship business in Europe, South America and Asia.
Buckles himself became a POW about 20 years later while working for a steamship company during the 1941 Japanese invasion of the Philippines.
During the months of captivity, Buckles helped a polio (news - web sites)-stricken girl with therapeutic exercises, supervised other prisoners working around the camp and encouraged them to do daily exercises, said Ken Buckles, a distant relative from Camby, Ore.
"He said, 'You have to have a reason for getting up every day,'" Ken Buckles said. "He said, 'I had a purpose, I had people who counted on me.'"
The 11th Airborne Division freed Buckles and others in Manila on Feb. 23, 1945.
Buckles married in 1946 and settled on a 330-acre farm near Charles Town in eastern West Virginia. His wife died four years ago.
Buckles still works on the farm and reads from his collection of more than 1,000 books.
Law, who moved to Nevada from Minnesota in 1993 to live with a son and his family, walks without a cane and drove a car until giving that up at 101. In his mid-90s, he went for rides in a hot air balloon and a sailplane. Buckles stopped driving last year.
Law became Nevada's last World War I veteran, as far as state and federal officials know, only last month, when 109-year-old William Brown died in Las Vegas.
"The World War I veterans set the stage for veterans who came along after them, who emulated them throughout the 20th Century," said Chuck Fulkerson, executive director of the Nevada Office of Veteran Services. "They answered a call to arms, to protect democracy which was under attack in foreign lands."
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Associated Press Writer Michelle Saxton in West Virginia contributed to this story.
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World War I veteran Reuben Law, with a collection of military memorabillia behind him, talks of his days in France in 1918-1919 when he was an Army Sgt. transporting injured soldiers from the trains to the village hospital, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2003, at his family home in Carson City, Nev. Law, 105, credits ``good heart genes'' and lifelong outdoor activity for his apparent status as Nevada's last remaining veteran of World War I. Law is one of fewer than 200 surviving U.S. veterans out of the 4.7 million who served during that war. (AP Photo/Cathleen Allison) |
Email this slideshow Reuben Law, second from the left in the front row, considered the oldest World War I veteran living in Nevada, is shown in this photo from late 1918, while he was serving as an Army Sgt. in France. Law was a dispatcher for a motor truck company who transported injured soldiers from the train to the small village hospital. Law, now 105, lives in Carson City, Nev., with family members and has many memories of the war. (AP Photo/Reuben Law)
World War I veteran Reuben Law, 105, a former mayor of Emily, Minn., tells stories of his days in the Army in France, from his Carson City, Nev., home Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2003. Law, 105, credits 'good heart genes' and lifelong outdoor activity for his apparent status as Nevada's last remaining veteran of World War I. (AP Photo/Cathleen Allison)
Thanks for the link!
Fighting 69th Bump
All my uncles, WW2 vets are gone. My recently deceased last uncle, Harold, 86, US Army, served in Europe in WW2 and was there when 2 concentration camps were liberated. I remember as a kid him showing the pictures he took of the camps.
To think of what the horrors of trench warfare must have been like, it may have this much in common with the camps... Death and suffering was all around.
He used to tell me the most wonderful stories. Fond memories!
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