CBSNews: Last living US WWI vet dies in W. Va. at age 110
(AP) MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Frank Buckles enlisted for World War I at 16 after lying about his age. He made it home again and ultimately became that war’s last surviving U.S. veteran, campaigning for greater recognition for his comrades-in-arms before dying at 110.
Buckles, who also survived being a civilian POW in the Philippines in World War II, died of natural causes Sunday at his home in Charles Town, biographer and family spokesman David DeJonge said. He was 110.
Buckles had been advocating for a national memorial honoring veterans of the Great War in the nation’s capital and asked about its progress weekly, sometimes daily.
“He was sad it’s not completed,” DeJonge said Monday. “It’s a simple straightforward thing to do, to honor Americans.”
When asked in February 2008 how it felt to be the last of his kind, he said simply, “I realized that somebody had to be, and it was me.” And he told The Associated Press he would have done it all over again, “without a doubt.”
