Monday, May 28th, 2007...7:51 pm
Over There
Today is Memorial Day when we remember those veterans who have died. In the various news stories, I heard a inevitable but still poignant statistic: there are now only three living US veterans of World War I.
To be complete, there are a total of five World War I vets living in the United States, but one served in the Commonwealth forces as a Canadian and one served in the German Army. The thing that strikes me the most was when that back in November, NPR ran a story chronicling the stories of living World War I vets, there were 14 living vets.
The phrase “War to End All Wars” is one that we always chuckle at. We have to remember that the Americans that were sent overseas seriously believed that they were risking their lives to end war and bring peace to the world. It was a less cynical age in so many ways.
The current living vets of World War I are:
Cpl. Frank Buckles - The only living US veteran of the conflict to finish basic training and get sent to France. The armistice was signed shortly afterward. Interestingly, Buckles worked as a civilian for a shipping company and was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II. He was grand marshall of the Memorial Day parade in Charles Town, West Virginia.
Pvt. Russell Coffey – The oldest veteran of the conflict. When the war broke out, he was working his way through college at a rubber factory. When he returned to Ohio, he finished his education and eventually earned a doctorate in education.
Pvt. Richard Landis – Signed up a month before the end of the war when the draft started. The latest report I read said that 107, he’s in good health and that the only medication that he takes is eyedrops.
The other two living here are Lance Corporal John Babcock of the Canadian Army (but now lives in Spokane) and William Steegers of the German Army who later immigrated to the United States. Keep all of these men and their lost brothers in your thoughts.
3 Comments
May 28th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
“It was a less cynical age in so many ways.”
One way or another, this statement is wrong, at least with respect to the example you provide to support it.
Lots of people today think that we are in the War to End All Terrorism right now, so many that our young men and women still are leaving their limbs or organs splattered across the streets of Baghdad every day. That is pretty naive at a pretty heavy cost.
Or, if you prefer, the WWI slogan was deployed to whip up war fever in a manner just as cynically calculating as the Iraq war was sold to Americans today.
I will grant you that perhaps the segment of the population who burned with a passionate hatred of the president and his evil cabal was smaller then than it is today…
May 31st, 2007 at 5:17 am
I disagree that ‘all war’ is necessarily bad: was stopping Hitler worth it? I think so. Also, sometimes a major battle will save a culture: what if Vienna had fallen to the Turks in 1683? True, the U.S. military allowed the looting of Baghdad’s museums in 2003. But while the 1914-1918 war was a battle of nationalism, imperialism, and economics, today’s “War on Terror” is a clash of religion, culture, and economics. I note that many critics said we shouldn’t have ‘abandoned’ Afghanistan to the Taliban in the 1990’s. The truth is, everything comes with a cost, and while in most cases, the less costly route is NO war, we must remember that the price of world domination by a radical brand of Islam that does not tolerate democracy, freedom or religion or speech, etc. is certainly NOT the scenario that we would want…but yet could happen. It has been said that those who won’t defend liberty don’t deserve it. I agree.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Robert:
And I don’t think you will find many Americans who would disagree that we should fight the terrorists who attacked us. Hence you haven’t seen many calls to get out of Afghanistan (though largely thanks to the ‘back burner’ our Administration put it on, the situation there has deteriorated significantly since our invasion of Iraq took precedence.)
The problem is that some confuse the war on terror with a blatant invasion of another country, one which had nothing to do with 9/11, and which frankly had far, far less to do with al-Qaeda than, for example, our good friends the Saudis.
It is true that now that we have invaded, terrorists have come there specifically to kill Americans, but as recent incidents in Anbar province show, the Iraqi locals are against all foreign invaders– the U.S. AND al-Qaeda.
It is truly ironic to me that some people can easily understand how Americans would take up arms to defend their country if it were invaded by a foreign power (the ‘Red Dawn’ scenario), but then are surprised when patriotic people in Iraq attack us, as foreign occupiers.