Frank Woodruff Buckles (born February 1, 1901) is, at age 108, the last identified living American veteran of World War I.[1] He currently lives in Charles Town, West Virginia and is the Honorary Chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation.
Buckles was born in Bethany, Missouri. He enlisted in the U.S. Army at the beginning of America’s involvement in World War I in April 1917. Only 16 years old at the time, Buckles was asked by his recruiter to show a birth certificate. Later Buckles said of that event, “When I was born in Missouri, they [the state] didn’t [issue] birth certificates, and the only record we kept was in the family Bible, and I told them I wasn’t going to bring that down here, so … they took me.” Before being accepted into the United States Army, he was turned down by the Marine Corps due to his slight weight.
In 1917, Buckles was sent to Europe on the RMS Carpathia, the same ship that had rescued the survivors of the Titanic sinking in 1912. During the war Buckles served in England and France, driving ambulances and motorcycles for the Army’s 1st Fort Riley Casual Detachment. After the Armistice in 1918, Buckles escorted prisoners of war back to Germany. Following his discharge in 1919, he attended the dedication of the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, in honor of those Americans who died in World War I. While there, he met General John “Black Jack” Pershing, commander all U.S. forces in France during the war.
In the 1920s Buckles worked for the White Star Line in Canada (the White Star Line had operated the Titanic). During World War II he worked as a civilian for an American shipping company in the Philippine Islands. He was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and spent the next three years in the Los Banos prison camp. He was rescued on February 23, 1945.
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