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The last veteran of Veterans Day
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This week marks the 91st anniversary of the armistice of the “War to End All Wars”. It was declared on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” in 1918. The actual end of the war took place with the Treaty of Versailles a few months later in June 1919.
It was the not the end of the war this country celebrated, but the end of the fighting. It was the beginning of the end. We wanted to honor those who made it home alive with parades and picnics. Annually we pledged never to go to war again.
Around the world, November 11 was celebrated as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. Woodrow Wilson declared the first Armistice Day in this country a year later on that date. It became an official holiday in 1938. In 1954 it was renamed “Veterans Day” to honor all veterans of all wars.
Frank Woodruff Buckles is probably someone you never heard of. Buckles tried to join the Marines in April 1917. When the Marines didn’t take him because of his age, and the Navy rejected him for flat feet, he enlisted in the Army Aug. 14, 1917. He served in the 1st Fort Riley Casualty Detachment in England and France, driving ambulances and motorcycles. After the Armistice, he escorted prisoners back to Germany. He was honorably discharged as a Corporal.
During World War II, he was imprisoned by the Japanese for over three years. At the time he had moved to Canada to work as a purser on steamship for White Star Line. He was in Manila, Philippines when the city fell to the Japanese. Now, at age 108, he lives in Claires Town, West Virginia. He’s known as the last living American serviceman from the First World War.
In one interview about the Iraq and Afghan War, Buckles was quoted two years ago in the Washington Post as saying, “I'm no authority, but I'm not in favor of war unless it's an emergency."
With that wisdom, the best way we can honor veterans, past and present, is to work towards a new Armistice Day, when we don’t commit this country to wars of opportunity, instead of necessity.
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