Like the Energizer Bunny, He Keeps on Going!

I wrote about him the day after Armistice Day in November of 2007. His name is Frank Buckles, and he is the last World War I veteran left in the United States. He just turned 108 today and is still telling stories of his long life.

Born in 1901 when most people got around with horses and buggies, he has seen all kinds of progress in his lifetime - and even has his own web page.

His story confirms what I've figured all along - in order to live to be old you have to choose your relatives well. His father lived to be 97 and relatives on his mother's side lived to be 100. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer article linked above, he smoked "a pound of pipe tobacco and a box of cigars" each month until he was in his 70s.

The idea of living to such an old age is fascinating to me. It seems as if, as long as a person is in good health as Frank Buckles is, it would be amazing to be able to look back on what changes have taken place in just one lifetime. As it is, I enjoy reminiscing about such obsolete things as mimeograph machines, carbon paper and onionskin paper for copies, 45s that played on a record player with a thing you stuck in the middle to fit the larger hole in the middle of those records.

This man remembers trying to teach his father how to drive a Model T and having his dad forget the car wasn't a horse and yell "whoa" instead of stamping on the brake, with predictable consequences.

The really amazing thing to me is that "he can remember talking to his grandmother, born in 1817. His grandmother, in turn, could remember talking to her grandfather, who had been in the Revolutionary War." That boggles the mind. My mother likes to point out that she remembers talking to her grandmother who was born in 1832, and no doubt talked to people who had been in the Revolutionary War too. It is thus that real history is preserved, and when people like Frank Buckles pass on, we lose that human relationship to history.

Frank Buckles has given a number of recorded interviews which can be found on this Library of Congress Veterans History website. But so many of us forget to ask our elderly relatives to tell us their stories, and once they're gone we never have that connection to history again.

For instance, my grandfather, who was in his mid-40s before he fathered my mother and aunt, was born way back in 1872, only seven years after the Civil War ended. No doubt he grew up hearing many personal experiences of that war but I never heard him talk about those stories. It would have been interesting to hear his perspective about that war and the experiences of people who actually lived through it.

My mother was born the year the First World War ended so although she was not around during the war, she did hear a lot about World War I from local residents who were veterans, and grew up reading a lot of novels and other books that referenced the "Great War" as it was known then. As a result she grew up with her own impressions about that war and passed her interest in it on to me.

My father did not serve in either World War. He was too young for the first, and although he could have served in World War II he was exempt due to his tendencies to nervousness and depression. He worked instead in the Office of Censorship reading and censoring German prisoners' mail, since he had learned German in school. But he did often reminisce about the past - particularly about FDR (he once saw President Roosevelt drive by in the Presidential Cadillac and never forgot it). My brother-in-law, on the occasion of Dad's 90th birthday, videotaped an interview he and my sister had with him, asking him all kinds of questions about his life. I have a copy of it and it is great to be able to listen to his stories of the past.

I must make an effort to do the same for my father-in-law (who served in World War II and was in the 5th Army as it marched through Italy in 1944-45) and my mother and aunt, who have seen so much history in their own lives. I've talked about it before but somehow never get around to it, and time is slipping by.

So do go to the Veterans History website and listen to Frank Buckles' stories. And ask your own elderly relatives to tell you theirs, and record them. It's one way we can remain in touch with history - and as you know, if we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.

Lest We Forget

"...They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them."

-Lawrence Binyon

Today is Armistice Day, as it was once called. Nowadays we call it Veterans Day. But originally it was created to celebrate the end of World War I. Of course, back then they didn't know it was World War I.

World War I tends to be the forgotten war, the one that happened so long ago that we don't think about it much anymore. At the time, "The Great War" had been called "The War to End All Wars." But only a generation later, the horrors of World War II eclipsed the memories of that war. Then came Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and now the War on Terror, as George Bush refers to our invasion of Iraq.

Armistice Day was originally created to commemorate the end of The Great War. (Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended "at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" of 1918,with the German signing of the Armistice.) Later, here in the United States, it was changed to Veterans Day to honor all veterans. World War I ended nearly 100 years ago; the last veterans are dying and soon there will be no one alive that personally remembers the war at all.

Today Memorial Day (originally called Decoration Day, since people were supposed to go decorate the graves of veterans on this day) has largely outshone Veterans' Day as a holiday. It is more conveniently situated at the end of May, during nice weather, at a time of the year that traditionally kicks off the summer season with barbecues and outdoor revelry. Like Veterans' Day, it was originally started to commemorate those who served in a specific war - the Union army during the Civil War - and then expanded to honor all veterans.

Veterans' Day largely loses out, being in the somber month of November, when people are deep into their work or school years, are starting to think about the upcoming holidays, and not really focusing on remembering the veterans. Many businesses no longer even honor this day as a holiday.

So today, let's take a moment to remember all veterans, and in particular, those long-ago, long-lost veterans of World War I. In honor of them, here is Lt. Col. John D. McCrae's poem:

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands, we throw
The torch - Be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

(Thanks to Kim, whose post on Remembrance Day, as it is known in Australia, reminded me that today is indeed November 11! Check out her blog and see her wonderful portrait of her family members who died in World War I).