Recently, I stumbled upon this news story from 2009:
70-Year-Old Reservist, Surgeon Returns To Iraq
So there is a 70 years old man, a Colonel, who actually serves in a theater of war. This leads to an interesting question: Are there cases of soldiers who served in one conflict as a young man and than returned to military service a very long time later (maybe never even leaving the service)?
For instance, German field marshal Paul von Hindenburg (1847 - 1934) served as a young lieutenant in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 and was the German chief of staff during WW I, well into his 70s, finally retiring from military service in 1919.
I’m almost certain that there weren’t veterans from the American Civil War who served in WW I.
Many of the senior officers in WW II had served in WW I. There must have been a number of soldiers from WW I who also served in the Korean War (at least Colonel Potter from MASH did…).
Could there have been soldiers who served in WW I who also served in Vietnam?
There was a significant number of WW II veterans who went on to fight in the Vietnam War. There are the names of soldiers on the Vietnam Wall Memorial who were in their 60s when they were killed in action.
It would also be interesting to know when the last veteran from WW II retired from service.
Winfield Scott served in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the American Civil War. He served from 1808 to 1861 and was a general for forty-seven years.
I read Norman Schwarzkopf’s biography a few years ago. His original assignment after West Point was 101st Airborne and he was a paratrooper. He did 2 tours in Viet Nam. He was sent as a consultant to Granada to help the Admiral organize that war. Then the Gulf War. Three wars in his career.
He credits the screw ups and confusion in Granada as a learning experience for his command in the Gulf War. The Navy was in charge in Granada and an Admiral was trying to organize and deploy ground troops & Air support. Schwarzkopf was there representing the Army and “eventually” was able to assist in the plans for ground forces. The command structure between the three military branches was pretty shaky in Granada and there was a lot of confusion.
George Patton was with General John J Pershing in the Pancho Villa Expedition, then in France in WWI and finally WWII. His experiences commanding tanks in WWI influenced his WWII command.
Prussian field marshal Karl Eberhard Herwarth von Bittenfeld (1796 - 1884) also had an interesting career: He joined the Prussian army in 1811 and fought in the wars against Napoleon.
55 years later, he was a general and commanded an Army in the Austro-Prussian War (1866). He was promoted to field marshal during the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71).
So Paul von Hindenburg (see my first post) in 1866 served as a young officer in a battle under a general who himself joined an Army that still used muzzleloaders which could fire two, maybe three shots a minute.
Von Hindenburg then decades later went on to be chief of staff in WW I, with machine guns, trench warfare, poison gas, aerial combat, aerial bombings and wireless telegraphy.
It’s a civilian position, but it’s the position in charge of the Royal Navy: the same person was First Lord of the Admiralty in 1914 at the start of World War I, and in 1939 at the start of World War II. He also worked as a war correspondent in 1895 during the Cuban War of Independence, and was a prisoner of war in 1899 during the Second Boer War. (At those times he was a military officer, but he wasn’t serving with his regiment.) Of course, he continued to play an important role – still as a civilian – in the conduct of World War II until the end in 1945. I’ll leave it as a simple exercise to identify the man who was so actively involved in various wars over a 50-year period, and was in charge of one of the world’s largest navies at two times, separated by 25 years.
A number of high-ranking officers (and no doubt enlisted men as well) of the Spanish-American war had served in the U.S Civil War. Thirty-five years after the fact, feelings between North & South still ran high; Teddy Roosevelt and others were hopeful that bringing old fighters together in another war might finally bring about some amount of reconciliation.
Gen. Rufus Shafter, who led the Cuban campaign was a Civil War vet who had gone on to fight in the Indian wars in the western territories. “Fighting Joe” Wheeler had been a Confederate cavalry general, then a long-serving U.S. Congressman from Alabama, became Major-general of volunteers in the Cuban theater during the Spanish-American conflict. He was, incidentally, commanding officer of Roosevelt and the Rough Riders unit.
Gen “Black Jack” Pershing started out in the Indian wars, then served as regimental quatermaster for the 10th cavalry “buffalo soldiers” in the Cuban campaign and, of course, went on to become leader of the American Expeditionary Forces in WW1.
The boy who grew up across the street from my family enlisted in the USArmy right out of high school and made it a career. While in the regular army, he served in Grenada and Desert Storm. After retirement, he went to the Army Reserves and has been deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Yikes!
There were quite a few WWII vets who served in the Korean Conflict and a number of Korea vets who served in Vietnam (I had uncles for each of these). It also tends to be difficult for medical personnel to completely retire. One of my aunts went into the reserves after serving two hitches active army and was only able to fully retire when she could no longer pass the physical. She served in Vietnam and Desert Storm.
To answer the OP, yes and ever more likely in the US, given our all volunteer military.
A young cavalry officer by the name of Douglas MacArthur served in Mexico during the Vera Cruz Incident in 1914, then later fought in France in WWI with the 42nd Infantry Division, also known as the “Rainbow Division”, a formation made up of National Guardsmen from numerous states.
He would later be in command of American and Philippine forces at the outbreak of WWII (several years after he retired, actually; he was recalled to active duty in the summer of 1941). A decade later, he was in command of United Nations forces during the outbreak of the Korean War. He ended up being relieved of his command in April of 1951 and retired shortly after, having served for 53 years.
Also off the top of my head, Major General Alfred Flowers, who I had the pleasure of meeting a few years back while I was in tech school, served from 1965 to 2012, serving for 47 years.
