With vet's passing, WWI is another kind of history

With vet's passing, WWI is another kind of history

Allen G. Breed
AP National Writer
Monday, Feb. 28, 2011

What was it like?

What was it like in the trenches? What was it like in all those places whose names have faded in the dusty recesses of memory, places like Ypres and Gallipoli, Verdun and the Marne? What was it like to fight the war that was supposed to make the world safe for democracy?

There's no one left to ask.

The Great War has almost passed from living memory. The veterans have slipped away, one by one, their obituaries marking the end of the line in country after country: Harry Patch, Britain's last survivor of the trenches; Lazare Ponticelli, the last of the French "poilu"; Erich Kastner, the last of the Germans.

And now, Frank Buckles, dead at age 110, the last U.S. veteran. Missouri boy. Sixteen years old, he lied about his age to get into the Army and badgered his superiors until they sent him to the French front with an ambulance unit, one of 4.7 million Yanks who answered the call to go "Over There."

All of them gone. None of them surviving to tell us about a brutish, bloody conflict that set new standards for horror.

No one to answer the question: What was it like?

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Hunkered in a network of fortifications gouged out of a low hill outside the Belgian town of Werwick, the young soldier and his comrades were shielded from shrapnel as the artillery bombardment thundered throughout the evening and into the night. But after four years of trench warfare, both sides had found ways to defeat such defenses.

As the rounds thudded into the rich soil of the famed Flanders Fields south of Ypres, the Bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide liquid hidden in the tips vaporized into the yellowish-brown cloud that earned this new and terrible weapon its nickname - "mustard gas." Heavier than the air around it, the gas descended into the trenches and dugouts, enveloping the men in a foul-smelling mist that seeped into the gaps around their shoddily constructed masks.

By midnight, many of the entrenched soldiers were incapacitated as their lungs burned, their eyes swelled shut and deep itches beneath their moldy woolen uniforms erupted into angry red blisters. The 29-year-old courier didn't feel the effects until the following morning, but when the pain finally arrived, it was excruciating.

"It increased with every quarter of an hour, and about seven o'clock my eyes were scorching as I staggered back and delivered the last dispatch I was destined to carry in this war," the young soldier wrote of that battle in the last days of World War I. "A few hours later my eyes were like glowing coals, and all was darkness around me."

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It started with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 - a tripwire for cataclysm.

By the time the Americans entered the war in April 1917, the Europeans had been hammering away at each other for three bloody years. Much of the French and Belgian countryside had been turned into a vast "no man's land" of barbed-wire entanglements, bounded on either side by serpentine networks of fortified trenches.

When ambulance driver Stull Holt arrived at Verdun in the fall of 1917, he discovered a scene of utter desolation.

"We were in historic ground and it looked it," the New York City native wrote home to family. "All the hills ... have been fought over many times and the result is that they are in waves of dirt with one shell hole overlapping the next; no grass or anything growing; no trees but where there used to be a forest you can see some black spots where the roots remain."

Man had invented an array of new tools for killing, and it seemed that all of Europe had become a proving ground.

Barely a decade after the Wright brothers skimmed over the grass at Kitty Hawk, the airplane had been perverted from a marvel of human ingenuity into an instrument of terror.

"It isn't very soothing for the nerves when you hear Fritz's engine going right overhead and hear him shut off just before dropping one of his pills," Lt. Bartlett H.S. Travis, who trained in Canada and joined the British Royal Flying Corps, wrote in an August 1918 letter home to New Jersey. "After his first pill the suspense waiting for the rest of them is awful."

Toward the war's end, the Germans used airplanes to experiment with a tactic they would later turn into an art form.

"I am sending to you a little sheet of German propaganda that has been dropped to our men on the front line by the Hun aeroplanes," Sgt. Morris Pigman wrote home from France in November 1918. "They are trying to weaken the morale of our men. What a feeble appeal for us to give ourselves up to them. Our boys only laugh at it and gather them up for souvenirs."

The machine gun had been around since the 1880s, and had seen limited action in the colonial campaigns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But the Germans brought a stereotypical efficiency to its deployment.

Setting up their water-cooled guns in nests strategically located along the front, the Germans could lay down a withering crossfire that easily broke the back of the traditional infantry or cavalry charge. In July 1916, German machine-gunners along the Somme reportedly killed 21,000 British soldiers in a single day.

"The machine gun bullets from both sides seemed to heat the air across the top of our hole," Sgt. Albert E. Robinson of the 140th Infantry wrote in a July 1918 diary entry. "The steady patter of our machine guns had a most business-like and reassuring sound."

The devastating effect of the machine gun led to the development of other weapons designed to break the stalemate. Flame-throwers were ideal at flushing out an entrenched enemy, and primitive tanks lumbered across battlefields, rolling over the quick and dead alike.

In the verses of British warrior/poet Siegfried Sassoon, man becomes subordinate to his creations, like so much raw meat to be ground up in the gears of a remorseless war machine.

"Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst

"Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,

"While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.

"He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,

"Sick for escape, loathing the strangled horror

"And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead."

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As a nurse's aide in a British volunteer aid detachment, future author and journalist Vera Brittain wondered in a letter to her mother whether people would be so hawkish if they could see what she saw daily on the wards.

"I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war, and the orators who talk so much about going on no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case - to say nothing of 10 cases of mustard gas in its early stages - could see the poor things all burnt and blistered all over with great suppurating blisters, with blind eyes - sometimes temporally, some times permanently - all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, their voices a mere whisper, saying their throats are closing and they know that they will choke."

After four years of war, the Allies had ceased to see their enemy - particularly the Germans - as human. To the French, he was the Boche; to the Americans, the faceless Hun.

Pvt. Marion E. Simmons of the 115th Engineers gleefully passed on to his family an anecdote he'd heard from another American.

"He was telling me about going through the German trenches right after the raid and stopped before the entrance to a dugout and shouted 'how many of you are down there?'" Simmons wrote. "Someone said '12.' The doughboy said 'well, just divide this up among you' and dropped a bomb down the hole."

Pfc. John Lewis Barkley won the Medal of Honor for his deeds in France. But he could not share the stories with his brother because he had done things "too bad to tell a civilized man."

"How would you like to have saw 5,000 dead men to every thousand yards," he wrote. "Just think of looking from our house to our west line and then place this many men in the space. Across on the German side they was twice as bad."

After such a war, Barkley wondered "what America is going to do with so many Americans that for two years they have been studying how to kill human beings."

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By the time the Germans agreed to an unconditional surrender in a railway carriage at Compiegne on Nov. 11, 1918, the carnage was almost beyond comprehension:

Nearly 20 million civilian and military casualties. More than 116,000 American dead, including more than 53,000 killed in combat.

It was a toll so horrifying that the world would spend the next decade devising a treaty to forever "condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another." Many, including a young Frank Buckles, hoped and even dared believe that H.G. Wells was right - that this would be the war to end all wars.

But the seeds of something worse had been sowed.

On Nov. 10, 1918, an aged pastor visited a hospital far removed from the front to bring word of the next day's cease-fire.

Among the patients was the young soldier who had been blinded by the gas attack near Ypres a month earlier. The courier was slowly regaining his sight and would recall that he could now make out "the general outlines of my immediate surroundings."

When he heard the clergyman's words, he broke down and wept like a child. But they were not tears of joy.

"Darkness surrounded me as I staggered and stumbled back to my ward and buried my aching head between the blankets and pillow," the young Austrian would write years later. "During the following days, my own fate became clear to me."

That soldier's name was Adolf Hitler.

Now that he's gone it really has passed into history. Harry Patch, our last WWI vet died last year. I wonder if there are any veterans of WWI still left alive from any nation on either side of the conflict?

From the sound of it, no. Not surprising. If any were born in 1899 or 1900, they have one foot in the grave already. All of my grandparent are dead (1908,1909, 1920 & 1925). So, the chances are slim.

Obama pays respects to last U.S. World War I vet

CNN
March 15, 2011

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday to honor Frank Buckles, the last American veteran of World War I to die.

Obama and Biden met with Buckles' family shortly before his funeral service.

Buckles passed away on February 27, less than a month after his 110th birthday. During what was then known as the "Great War," he served as a U.S. Army ambulance driver in Europe, rising to the rank of corporal before the conflict ended.

Buckles also served in World War II, having taken up a career as a ship's officer on merchant vessels. He was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II and held prisoner of war for more than three years before he was freed by U.S. troops.

Late in his life, he became a public advocate for a national World War I memorial in Washington comparable to those for veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

While Buckles received a special burial at Arlington, he did not lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda -- a tribute his family and several of members of Congress sought as a final, formal tribute to all the veterans of World War I.

More than 116,000 Americans were killed and over 204,000 were wounded in the 19 months of U.S. involvement in World War I, according to the Congressional Research Service. The overall death toll of the 1914-18 conflict was more than 16.5 million, including nearly 7 million civilians, and more than 20 million wounded.

Following the death of Buckles, there are only two known living veterans of World War I, both of whom are British.

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:Now that he's gone it really has passed into history. Harry Patch, our last WWI vet died last year. I wonder if there are any veterans of WWI still left alive from any nation on either side of the conflict?

Answer in previous posting.

TexasBlue wrote:Following the death of Buckles, there are only two known living veterans of World War I, both of whom are British.

Indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surviving_veterans_of_World_War_I

There's Claude Charles Stanley Choules, age 110, a seaman with the Royal Navy now living in Perth, Australia.

And there's Florence Green, also age 110, a waitress with the Royal Women's Airforce.

Now, no disrespect to Ms. Green, but does a waitress really qualify as a veteran?? Claude Stanley Choules is the last living combatant of WWI. He also fought in WWII.

Harry Patch, I believe, was the last survivor of trench warfare.

She was on active service, though obviously as a woman not on the front lines, and clearly in a support role, so she does qualify as a veteran.

kronos wrote:Indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surviving_veterans_of_World_War_I

There's Claude Charles Stanley Choules, age 110, a seaman with the Royal Navy now living in Perth, Australia.

Claude Choules, the last World War I combat veteran, was defiant of age, place in history

Associated Press
May 5, 2011

SYDNEY - The last known combat veteran of World War I was defiant of the tolls of time, a centenarian who swam in the sea, twirled across dance floors, and published his first book at 108. He also refused to submit to his place in history, becoming a pacifist who wouldn't march in parades commemorating wars like the one that made him famous.

Claude Stanley Choules, a man of contradictions, humble spirit and wry humor, died in a Western Australia nursing home on Thursday at the age of 110. And though his accomplishments were many — including a a 41-year military career that spanned two world wars — the man known as "Chuckles" to his comrades in the Australian Navy was happiest being known as a dedicated family man.

"We all loved him," his 84-year-old daughter Daphne Edinger told The Associated Press. "It's going to be sad to think of him not being here any longer, but that's the way things go."

Choules was born March 3, 1901, in the small British town of Pershore, Worcestershire, one of seven children. As a child, he was told his mother had died — a lie meant to cover a more painful truth: She left when he was 5 to pursue an acting career. The abandonment affected him profoundly, said his other daughter, Anne Pow, and he grew up determined to create a happy home for his own children.

In his autobiography, "The Last of the Last" published just two years ago, he remembered the day the first motor car drove through town, an event that brought all the villagers outside to watch. He remembered when a packet of cigarettes cost a penny. He remembered learning to surf off the coast of South Africa, and how strange he found it that black locals were forced to use a separate beach from whites.

He was drawn to the water at an early age, fishing and swimming at the local brook. Later in life, he would regularly swim in the warm waters off the Western Australia state coast, only stopping when he turned 100.

World War I was raging when Choules began training with the British Royal Navy, just one month after he turned 14. In 1917, he joined the battleship HMS Revenge, from which he watched the 1918 surrender of the German High Seas Fleet, the main battle fleet of the German Navy during the war.

"There was no sign of fight left in the Germans as they came out of the mist at about 10 a.m.," Choules wrote in his autobiography. The German flag, he recalled, was hauled down at sunset.

"So ended the most momentous day in the annals of naval warfare," he wrote. "A fleet of ships surrendered without firing a shot."

Choules and another Briton, Florence Green, became the war's last known surviving service members after the death of American Frank Buckles in February, according to the Order of the First World War, a U.S.-based group that tracks veterans. Choules was the last known surviving combatant of the war. Green, who turned 110 in February, served as a waitress in the Women's Royal Air Force.

Choules met his wife, Ethel Wildgoose, in 1926 on the first day of a six-week boat trip from England to Australia, where he had been dispatched to serve as a naval instructor at Flinders Naval Depot in Victoria state. Ten months later, they were married. They went on to have three children — Daphne, Anne and Adrian, now in their 70s and 80s.

The couple would spend the next 76 years together, until Ethel's death in 2003 at the age of 98. Even in their final days together, they could often be spotted sitting side-by-side, holding hands.

"I think it was love at first sight," Choules wrote in his autobiography. "Certainly on my part, anyway."

Choules later joined the Royal Australian Navy and settled permanently Down Under, where he found life much more pleasant than in his home country.

"I was nobody," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio in November 2009 of his years in England. "But I was somebody here."

During World War II, he was the acting torpedo officer in Fremantle, Western Australia, and chief demolition officer for the western side of the Australian continent. Choules disposed of the first mine to wash ashore in Australia during the war.

He later transferred to the Naval Dockyard Police and remained in the service until his retirement in 1956.

"His career has spanned some of the most significant events in maritime history," Royal Australian Navy Captain Brett Wolski said in a statement Thursday.

But despite the fame his military service (and longevity) brought him, Choules later in life became a pacifist who was uncomfortable with anything that glorified war. He disagreed with the celebration of Anzac Day, Australia's most important war memorial holiday, and refused to march in parades held each year to mark the holiday.

"He didn't believe in war," Edinger said.

After his retirement, he and Ethel bought a beach house south of Perth and spent the next 10 years cray-fishing, relishing the peaceful moments at the end of their days when they would have tea aboard their boat.

In his 80s, he took a creative writing course at the urging of his children and decided to record his memoirs for his family. The memoirs formed the basis of his autobiography, which was finally published three decades later in 2009. He would cite the book as one of his greatest achievements.

He usually told the curious that the secret to a long life was simply to "keep breathing." Sometimes, he chalked up his longevity to cod liver oil. But his children say in his heart, he believed it was the love of his family that kept him going for so many years.

"His family was the most important thing in his life," Pow told the AP in a March 2010 interview. "It was a good way to grow up, you know. Very reassuring."

Even as he passed the century milestone, he remained remarkably healthy and active, and continued to dance until a few years ago. He liked to start each day with a bowl of porridge and occasionally indulged in his favorite treats: mango juice and chocolate.

"He doesn't have medication because there's nothing wrong with him," Pow told the AP on Choules' 110th birthday.

"He's just going to quietly drift out of life — eventually," she added with a laugh.

Still, the aging process took its toll, and in recent years, he grew blind and nearly deaf. Despite that, his children say he retained his cheerful spirit and positive outlook on life.

"I had a pretty poor start," he told the ABC in November 2009. "But I had a good finish."

What an incredible life.

He usually told the curious that the secret to a long life was simply to "keep breathing."

I like that.

I was hoping he'd make it to 2014 at least, but realistically there was no chance.