Frank Buckles, the last surviving Doughboy

Cape Cod Times ^ | November 10, 2010 | Peter Abair

[Deo volente]

Frank Woodruff Buckles of Charles Town, W. Va., is 109 years old. To appreciate his lifespan consider that, at 10 years old, Frank would have known a great many people who had lived during the Civil War, concluded just 45 years before.

[wbill]

I work out the number of generations of my family all the way back to the revolutionary war, it wasn’t that many

Yep, my dad's an amateur genealogist. He's tripped over a number of books about our family history (noting remarkable, mostly local histories). He found one journal that was both completely bland and utterly facinating at the same time. Entries like "The town had a dinner this past week, Ebeneezer brought his fiddle for entertainment, his daughter was unable to attend because she is expecting a child." (the fiddle is still in the family, the child - we think - would have been my great-grandmother).

What's particularly interesting is to see how my kids relate. My oldest visited a local Revolutionary War battlefield. "Booring" was the comment. Then, I mentioned that his 5g-grandfather (who, coincidentally, he shares a name with) was one of the Minutemen at North Bridge in Concord. NOW - we're talking. He can't get enough, and everything always relates back to the Minutemen, and Lexington and Concord, and (especially, right now) Paul Revere's ride.

It's all just a matter of finding the right connection. :-)

[Ditto]

I lived next door to a WW I vet when I was a kid, back in the day when older people weren’t SCARED to speak with kids and vice versa, and he was an interesting guy with a lot of stories.

I knew a lot of WWI vets when I was a kid including one of my Little League coaches. He was a great guy and very good coach. I even met a guy who was in the Spanish-American war and with the relief force in the Boxer rebellion. He went on to become a chiropractor and was still seeing patients into his 90s, which was when I knew him.

[Psalm 144]

Tough minded and confident in both photos.

[Deo volente]

Frank Buckles is presented the Patrick Henry Medallion at Arlington National Cemetery. (Photo: Washington Post/Getty Images)

[Poser]

Yup. One of the many relatives I had in revolutionary times was a man named William Dawes. He also rode the midnight ride of Paul Revere, but he never made beer so he is less well known.

[Erasmus]

I can’t vouch for the truth of this, but it is said that Napoleon shortened the French male by two inches.

[Erasmus]

Henry Stimson served in the Federal government in various capacities, most notably as Secretary of War in both WW I and WW II.

As a child, he heard his Grandmother tell of the time she (as a young child herself) had a conversation with George Washington.

If you look at the dates, it was just possible.

[Redleg Duke]

My maternal Grandfather was an Infantryman (Real Doughboy) in the trenches in France with the 42nd Infantry Division. He told me of his adventures.

I remember the last Civil War Vet passing. Now, my Grandfather's Buddies are down to only one.

[fso301]

Still about 100 living children of Civil War vet's.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/apr/17/links-to-a-bygone-era/

[rmlew]

I had an elderly French teacher who was born in 1914 and remeberd the war. Her family was from Lorraine and they were internal exiles in France. They retunred home after the Germans lost in 1919. In 1940 her family, minus a brother who died in the Battle of France fled to Vichy territory but were stopped. Her parents were killed for anti-Nazi activity, although they were likely just killed in reprisals. Her older sister's former lover Antoine de Saint-Exupery (author of "Le Petit Prince"). Oh did she hate the Germans. She was terrified when the Berlin Wall came down.

I never met my paternal grandfather, whose name I carry. He fought in WW1 (as an Austrian officer), the Polish-Russian war (killing commies), and as a partisan in WW2. In 1967 he took saw two of his daughters off to battle in call up to the Six Day war. He then hobbled over to an IDF base offering to join claiming that he could still shoot. They sent him home.

[fso301]

What will they say about us?

Pretty much the same things they say about the Tea Party.

[Borges]

Frank was born the same day as Clark Gable. Gable died 50 years ago today.