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Chicago Tribune
February 5, 2005

103-Year-Old Vet Last Of A Breed

World War I-era soldier buried; no others believed left in state, officials say By John McCormick, Tribune staff reporter

The 20th--and last--name will soon be inscribed near the statue of a soldier that sits on the north end of the cemetery in Anna, Ill., a monument to the city's World War I veterans. The name belongs to Warren V. Hileman, laid to rest Friday with full military honors under an unusually warm February sky in southern Illinois. State officials say Hileman, 103, was the state's last veteran from the World War I era, a soon-to-be extinct group now estimated at less than 100 nationally. "It marks the end of an era of World War I veterans," Roy Dolgos, director of the state's Department of Veterans' Affairs, told those gathered for the funeral. "It is highly unlikely that we will see another World War I veteran in Illinois." Hileman joined the U.S. Army in 1919, just after the end of World War I. He served with the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia from September 1919 to March 1920, an invasion that continued after the Armistice sent the doughboys in Europe home. As a member of Company B, 27th Infantry, Hileman was involved in a hostile encounter in Posolskaya, a battle that earned him the World War I Victory Medal, awarded in January 2004. "He has seen some hard days," said Dennis Clayton, 72, a fellow resident of the veterans' home in Anna, who had heard many of Hileman's war stories. "He never flew in an airplane, but he rode in a boat all over the world." In the 1950s and 1960s, Hileman lived in Waukegan and worked as a security guard at the veterans hospital in North Chicago, according to his grandson, Chris Hardin. He moved back to his native southern Illinois in the mid-1970s, along with his wife, Mae, who died in 1989. Hileman always had stories about the cold in Siberia. "He told us it was so cold that when they were standing in line for their food, it would freeze right on their plates," said Dolgos. At the veterans home, Hileman was known for reading the newspaper every day. His daughter, Janet Hardin, said she believes his lifelong curiosity is what kept him alive so long. "He always wanted to see what was over the next hill," she said.