I believe that the name of the last American WWI soldier was Frank. That’s the way I will think of them – just by their first names – Harry and Frank.
Does anyone know the last Great War survivors from other countries? Film footage that I’ve seen is not like anything else.
I am a pacifist. But any person who serves humanity out of a sense of duty and honor is a hero to me. That includes the military, Peace Corps, environmentalists, peace advocates, members of Amnesty International, etc. There are many, many vocations I could include.
There are only 3 left;
Claude Choules who served in the Royal Navy in WWI.
Jack Babcock of the Canadian army who completed training in the UK, fortunately for him the war ended before he was shipped to the front.
Frank Buckles, last American ‘doughboy’, Ambulance driver on the western front.
There could be Turks or Russians we don’t know about- I sort of doubt it though. We always knew that at some stage there would be none. They were hero’s to be in the trenches- hell if I could have been.
I’m sorry but i don’t agree. To be a hero you need to have done something specifically heroic, going to war and getting injured is basically part of the job description in being a soldier. Now if you told me he took that injury by throwing himself on top of his comrades to protect them from an explosion then by all means call him a hero. Showing up to war and surviving a battle make him a very brave and honorable man, much better than me in every way i am sure, but a hero? not unless you can point out to anything heroic he did that wasn’t just a direct result of being involved in a war.
How do you differentiate from a guy who went to war and one who threw himself on top of a grenade to save his fellow soldiers? calling both of them heroes doesn’t seem right.
I’m not arguing that there aren’t degrees of heroism, I am arguing that someone who went through what Patch went through can certainly be considered a hero (in my view at least);
“a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.”
Personally I believe you needed considerable courage and ability to simply function (see combat stress reaction) in that environment, literally no-one alive today can relate to the horror what he went through. He was also universally admired after the war for being a true gentleman, and volunteering for the fire service in WWII would certain be a brave and noble thing to do.
When I was a kid in the 1970s, WWI vets were still quite commonplace. I can’t believe we’re down to two or three. Looking at this list:
[ul]
[li]The last Mexican-American War veteran died in 1929.[/li][li]The last Crimean War veteran died in 1940.[/li][li]The last United States Civil War veteran died in 1956.[/li][li]The last Spanish-American War veteran died in 1993. (I had no idea any survived that late.)[/li][li]The last Boer War veteran died in 1993.[/li][li]The last October Revolution veteran died in 2006.[/li][/ul]
By what measure did WWI involve a cause worth fighting for, for anyone? As far as I can figure, it was all terribly pointless, mismanaged, horrifying… and had a large number of very bad consequences.
From British perspective it was worth it to curtail German power in continental Europe, which is the same reason young men went to fight and die in the Napoleonic wars (replace “German” with “French”, obviously). Whether or not it was worth it, who knows. Probably not, although much of that blame lies not with the men fighting but with the changed nature of war and inability to cope with it on the part of leaders.
George: The war started because of the vile Hun and his villainous empire- building.
Blackadder: George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe, while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in Tanganyika. I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the imperialistic front.
Blackadder: You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent a war in Europe, two super blocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side; and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast, opposing armies, each acting as the other’s deterrent. That way, there could never be a war.
Baldrick: Except, well, this is sort of a war, isn’t it?
Blackadder: That’s right. There was one tiny flaw in the plan.
George: Oh, what was that?
Blackadder: It was bollocks.
Although from the point of view of the British in 1914 the French were in deep merdé, and Britain couldn’t allow for one dominant power on the continent (the ‘balance of power’ idea having kinda sorted kept peace between the main powers for, oh, about a good 40 years), nor abide violation of neutral Belgian sovereignty…
Not to diminish the man in the slightest but he was conscripted. The law and societal pressures(which were even stronger then than now from what I’ve read) forced the poor bastards to walk into the grinder, a grinder which no generation had ever experienced before( of that modern type anyway, with the exception maybe of the American civil war folks who got a horrible taste of the way warfare was changing).
Harry got through and at the time of his death was the 4th known oldest person in the world. Fair play. The symbolic nature of who he was is very important though. Like when the last known veteran of the American Civil War etc. died. A direct human link to one of the most horrific and important events in modern history has passed.
Harry may have been a true hero. We don’t know what he actually did. He only started talking about it after he passed 100 from the reports I’ve read so even he probably wasn’t the best judge by then either.
Fair well Harry, you will always have a sentence in the history books which is more than 99.999…% of humanity will or have had, Well done.