We can best protect and honor these heroes through immediate withdrawal!
Posted on 02/27/2007 2:05:46 AM PST by FreedomCalls
Last November, I told you that only a dozen U.S. World War I veterans were still living. As of Friday, the number, by my count, dropped to four. A couple of those deaths: Moses Hardy, the last known black WWI vet, died in December. KATU-TV in Portland, Ore., tells me that 108-year-old Howard Ramsey just died. That leaves this list:
- Lloyd Brown, 106, lives in Bethesda, Md.
- Frank Buckles, 106, lives near Charles Town, W.Va.
- Russell Coffey, 108, lives in North Baltimore, Ohio.
- Charlotte Winters, 109, lives in Boonsboro, Md.
and a nat holiday/ day of morning?
~D
Regards, Ivan
We can best protect and honor these heroes through immediate withdrawal!
We can feel a helpless sense of loss... How wonderful it would be for the US to fly them all to DC, meet with / dinner with the president, ...prolly most are invalids and I
wonder if any all are completely lucid. I didn't see your November article & didn't think any were still living.
Thanks for info
Leadpennies were teenagers when there were just four Civil War Vets alive.
I remember when I was a kid in the 1950's as the last veterans of the American Civil War died off between 105 and 110 or so. It makes me feel very old to see the last of the WWI vets go - I had an uncle, long dead now, who was a WWI vet, and several great uncles who saw combat in WWI.
I am pretty sure there is one living at the Veterans Home in Charlotte Hall Md. who isnt on this list.
Fortunately, I do think historians have been good about trying to record their thoughts and observations. In that sense, they're immortal.
Regards, Ivan
Yes, I can remember some last remnants of the GAR marching in 4th of July parades in the late 40s/ early 50s. Brings a tear to my eye thinking about it.
The year I was born there were CW vets at the Worlds Fair. The last one died in 1959(?) he was a drummer boy in the CSA.
You're so right. To think there was a Czar in Russia...it's just amazing. Ever read Dreadnaught by Robert Massie?
In high school, I remember playing taps at a few WWI vets funerals. One was the grandfather of my neighbor and a good friend of my family.
It is hard to think that they are almost all gone.
I hope the last one gets an officers cap, a pistol, and a "trench whistle" then raises his gun, and blows the last "charge" whistle to be heard!
The list at Wikipedia has one more name among the US veterans: Harry Landis, born 12 December 1899, living in Tampa Bay, Florida.
...the last of the Civil War vets died in 1959, nearly a century after the outbreak of hostilities...astounding. This vet was a CSA drummer boy. The last Union vet died in 1954. In 1949, the year I was born, the last encampment of the GAR was held, with six vets in attendance...these men lived to see the time of Napoleonic field tactics to the onset of the nuclear age...again, astounding...
Almost every town in our state has a WW I memorial with the names of the dead inscribed. My great uncle was one of them and now his town has designed a memorial to him. According to our family histories, he was a great young man who lost his life to a German shell that exploded near him while he was delivering messages to outlying units for his commander.
At a certain point I became fascinated by WWI simply because its sequel had so obliterated its memory. Back in the Seventies I met and spoke with a few WWI veterans. Unfortunately, most of those talks were disappointing with nothing memorable related. But one vet I spoke with provided plenty of stories, such as digging up turnips in a Belgian turnip field, and being strafed by a German plane on 10/8/'18 (the exact same date Sgt. York performed his famous act of heroism). Bullets entered either one arm and two legs, or two arms and one leg (I don't remember which). That was the end of the fighting for him. He and other wounded Americans were taken to London to eat with King George V. He showed me a photo of the room and pointed out the silver and gold in the acoutrements of the room. He said that he was the only guest who didn't steal one of the silver (or gold) spoons, and now he wished he had.
Before this he had been fighting under British command as they broke through the Hindenburg Line. American Doughboys fought under French and British commanders before fighting under American officers as the American First Army in sept. '18.
It is truly the end of an era. I bet very few schoolkids know anything about "the Great War" nowadays.
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