Not another one! This bloody war must end!
Frank W. Buckles died Sunday, sadly yet not unexpectedly at age 110 [...]
In 1917 and 1918, close to 5 million Americans served in World War I, and Mr. Buckles, a cordial fellow of gentle humor, was the last known survivor. “I knew there’d be only one someday,” he said a few years back. “I didn’t think it would be me.”
So… the U.S. had the last man standing? We won! We did it! USA! USA! USA! Take that, kaiser!
Actually, Wikipedia says there are still two living veterans, both of them British. The Allies are the last ones standing, to be sure. But not us.
Oh. In that case, let’s re-fight this war. [WP]
{ 115 comments }
This guy had quite a life. In addition to enlisting for WWI at age 16, he spent 3 years as a prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines before being dramatically rescued.
I say he's a hero for not parleying that POW experience into a career in politics.
HENGGHHHH??
Three years imprisoned? Pissant!
Real men crash planes, then spend FIVE AND AN HALF YEARS, ALAN. FIVE AND AN HALF YEARS!
Or as a faux noise reporter.
Another victim of Obama's death panels.
World War I was fucking horrible, but at least it was The War to End War and we've got the League of Nations to show for it.
What?
Didn't you know that the League of Nations was actually a Progressive Plot put forward by Woodrow Wilson and George Soros to establish a Muslin Caliphate lead the Red Chinese, ruled by Zombie Karl Marx, who is actually also the Antichrist?
I heard it on Glenn Beck, a man who is actually employed by a television station that somehow gets categorized by DirecTV as "news".
It is just a shame that Woodrow WIlson abandoned Christianity to become an Iman.
Al-Vadru Al-Walik, please.
And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
The old men march slowly, all tired, bent, and sore,
The forgotten sons of a forgotten war,
And the young people ask , what are they marching for?
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays a "waltzing matilda",
And the old men they answer the call,
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all.
The last Australian veteran died a couple of years ago. Amidst all the eulogising and conservative politicians saying pompous and inane things, it was revealed that he had been an official for the notoriously militant Builders' Labourers' Federation and that in the 1940s he'd served as a bodyguard for a Labor Senator who was widely understood to be a secret member of the Communist Party.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lE-YjjZhwc
Uh-oh…I've got the whiskey out now.
Finally we can stop with this "liberty cabbage" nonsense and get back to calling it sauerkraut.
I've gassed quite a few trenches after an evening of too much "liberty cabbage."
You sir have cost me a wireless keyboard. Well played.
Born by lantern light, mourned by laptop light.
Sail away, Frankie Doughboy, sail away…
i wish i could give you more points for that though i do not expect wonkette to make me tear up.
Thanks…
Whenever I pause to ponder the incomprehensibly absurd advancements and events absorbed by someone whose life spanned such a ludicrous arc of human history, I'm invariably, indescribably moved.
His NY Times obit mentioned Mr. Buckles seeing a ceremony for Crimean War veterans when he was deployed in England. It's no stretch to think that those Crimean War veterans could have encountered someone from the Revolutionary War era. It reminds you how short history really is.
Sadly, it also makes me wonder what idiotic foreign adventures my kid's going to (hopefully) oppose when he's in college…
Oh, I think chances are pretty good it'll be Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
No blood for cheese! Get our troops out of Wisconsin!
Just wait: you have inspired the next culinary sensation, blood cheese.
Sadly, it makes me imagine your great grandchild wondering the even more wastedlands that used to be "America" and encountering a wizened old fellow, near about a century old far as he can count, who tells her he's a veteran of the First Gulf War.
"The Ten Years War, the Twenty Years one, or the Fifty Years one," she says.
"Hell, the first one," says he, "the forty two day one, we called it Desert Storm, dayum if we only knew. Uh, you're not gonna kill me and render my body into lamp oil are you? I'm very stringy and I never voted Republican."
Thanks for reminding me. Gotta read "A Boy and His Dog" with the kiddo. He sleeps too soundly, anyway.
History is short, alright. I remember having conversations with my great-grandmother who was born when Lincoln was president. Living from 1862 – 1964, she was around for every presidential assassination this country has seen.
If she had somehow lived through the GWB presidency, she could have also seen all the one's we wished we'd seen.
Hey-o. Just kidding Secret Service.
Your great-grandmother was in the Illuminati?
My great-grandmother passed two years ago. My great-grandfather died due to injuries he received while serving in WW I.
I only marvel at the technological advances made during her lifetime, when I remember telling me as a young girl they would load up the wagon with extra stuff from the farm and going to the nearest town to trade for stuff they needed.
To this day, I still call November 11th, Armistice Day, and to the twenty and thirty somethings in the office, I get strange looks.
November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy… all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.
–Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
My dad was born in 1911 (He was 52 when I showed up). He remembered Civil War veterans marching in local parades. In the back 40 of his aunt's farmland, there was a stand of trees planted by Johnny Appleseed. Time is nothing. We are mayflies, flitting in the sunshine for one brief, summer day, and then gone.
When my father died, we put him in the ground
When my father died, it was like a whole library had burned down
–Laurie Anderson, "World Without End"
A glass raised to your father, and another to my father, born September 11, 1899 (I was adopted when he was in his early 60's). I looked him up using one of those genealogy websites, and found that I can order, from the Bloated Evil Oppressive Federal Gummint that Must Be Shut Down, a copy of his WWI draft card (he wasn't called) and his WWII service records (he volunteered & served stateside in the Quartermaster Corps). I'd give anything to have his old grey "Ike" jacket.
Last call for me; between beer, war poetry and talk of dads, I'm getting maudlin. Somebody play "Danny Boy" or "Fairytale of New York."
This one's for you, dreaming Dok…and the dear, departed dads, too:
"Johnny Doughboy Found a Rose in Ireland"
Alas, 'tis but a taste, but a bonny ol' taste it be.
♪♫ Johnny Doughboy sailed away,
And it was his lucky day,
Even though the skies were gray above.
On that isle across the sea,
Johnny's making history,
With his Yankee doodle arms of love.
Johnny Doughboy found a rose in Ireland,
Sure the fairest flow'r that Erin ever grew;
Oh, the Blarney in her talk,
Took him back to old New York,
Where his mother spoke the sweetest blarney, too.
Johnny Doughboy found a rose in Ireland,
And she stole his heart with smilin' eyes of blue,
He said "Darlin', 'tis my duty,
To make an American beauty,
Of a sweet Irish rose like you." ♪♫
Hey, you know who else was a soldier in World War I?
Jesus?
General Pershing?
The Pillsbury Doughboy?
Ronald Raygunzap?
Forrest Gump?
George Bush?
Also, those yummy US Navy Yeomanettes.
Hawt!
Hubba, hubba!
I was thinking Hemingway, who also drove an ambulance, but these are all good guesses.
Scott Walker?
Uhhh, yeah.
Ajax?
Snoopy!
Oh sorry, he was a pilot not a soldier. History's not my strong suit..
Walnuts!!!1!
Adolf Hitler, who described his four years in the trenches as the happiest of his life. That alone disqualified him from Humanity.
Carrot top?
Ricky Schroeder?
"Few others born during the McKinley administration lived to have a Facebook page, as he did."
Way to get that plug for your new $$-making ad venture partners into this completely unrelated story, WaPo. Stay classy!
Isn't that spelled "McKinely" these days?
Well everyone knows the Brits don't count as real people (maybe half a person – closer than brown people or Muslims, they're like a quarter of a person, but you know those Brits harbor the brown people and Muslims so maybe they get to count as a third. So really there's only two thirds of a person still alive.)
Can I have your car after LimeyLizzie finishes with you?
Only if the Palintards don't steal it for a highway-side protest
Is this classification based on body weight? Because that'd sort of work. That was why the Vietnamese barely counted – right? A teabagger could sit on a Vietnamese peasant and they'd disappear into their butt crack.
…
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes wilting in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitten as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
She said that for over an hour
And I hung up.
The old lie
Absolutely!!! This olde vet wishes he could give you a thousand up fists!!!
it had to be said.
Wilfred Owen FTW… just a few weeks ago, I was substituting in a junior high class and working with a couple of immigrant kids who thought this was one hell of a poem*:
The Last Laugh
‘O Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died.
Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed,
The Bullets chirped—In vain! vain! vain!
Machine-guns chuckled,—Tut-tut! Tut-tut!
And the Big Gun guffawed.
Another sighed,—‘O Mother, mother! Dad!’
Then smiled, at nothing, childlike, being dead.
And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
Leisurely gestured,—Fool!
And the falling splinters tittered.
‘My Love!’ one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,
Till, slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.
And the Bayonets’ long teeth grinned;
Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;
And the Gas hissed.
————————————-
* No doubt the chance for school-sanctioned blasphemin' in the first line added to the appeal.
EDIT: And you know what happens when you start following links and thinking about war poetry? You end up at a surprisingly lovely, erudite little essay about the "piling swivel (Which in your case you have not got)" in Henry Reed's gorgeous poem "The Naming of Parts." That's what happens.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
God, yes. That one has haunted me since I encountered it in high school in 1977. Jarrell and Catch-22 and Vonnegut brought some different resonances to my affection for building plastic models of warbirds.
(And thank you, Mrs. Burkhardt, for making us read poetry, even if I'll always be a stubbornly prose-oriented person).
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
The old lie²
Missed yer post right behind chascates, so 999 more thumbs up, iffin' I could.
Dammit, Mr. Buckles, we're sorry to see you go. But thanks for kicking the kaiser's ass for us.
The Kaiser is a BADDIE.
But gold is $1400 and ounce
Off topic and not to detract from Mr. Buckle's passing…but I bet there are bunches of Jehovah's Witless' just coming into their plain white briefs at this news. The time is nigh!
Oh thanks, you just made me more creeped out by the Jehos. I'm not opening the door for them ever again, even the older ladies wearing church hats.
Oy….I once had a supervisor that was a JW. Those fuckers are creepier than you can imagine.
The dogged refusal of the world to actually end is a constant bother to your apocalyptic sects, necessitating no end of annoying (albeit erudite) revisions.
21 May 2011, according to Harold Camping.
Mr. Buckles,
Without your service I wouldn't be able to be a smart ass on the Wonkette, probably.
Seriously: Thank you for your service, Sir.
True dat. "Snark isn't free."
The terrible sad truth, of course, is that WW I was such a clusterfuck of massive pointlessness, a chain reaction of alliances and petty grudges that fed tens of millions of young men into a stalemated meatgrinder of a trench war, over the vitally important principle of…uh…well, you see, …it was all for…that is to say the Great Cause was…er.
Freedom! Yeah, it was definitely about freedom!
Hey now, if the Allies hadn't won the Great War Germany would be the economic and industrial leader of a united continental Europe. Oh, whoops…
Oh, I know, and of course the social upheavals and mental scars resulting from the war gave us fun stuff like jazz, flappers, dadaism, the "Lost Generation" writers and arteestes, and, of course, hyperinflation in Germany and the eventual rise of the Nazis.
That Clara Bow was totally worth the National Socialism.
To stop evildoers?
"Oh. In that case, let’s re-fight this war."
A few years back when the former Yugoslavia was waring with itself I was afraid we might just have to do that.
I wonder if the Westboro assholes will picket his funeral?
Where do these dickweeds get the money to travel to protest at all these funerals? I think someone needs to check their church tax-free status.
Seriously, they get their money from being such obnoxious assholes that people are provoked to assault them (or try to bar them from demonstrating). They make a tidy living off of the resulting lawsuits.
That's not just a side effect either, They were set up purposely to do just that. The fact that they're warping children's minds to do it is the side effect.
As stated below, the WBC is a law firm in search of lawsuits.
"gee, i wish i were a man!'
my favorite propaganda poster ever:
http://www.allposters.com/gallery.asp?startat=/ge...
A couple of good ones: http://www.classroomtools.com/army1970.jpg http://www.classroomtools.com/army1972.jpg
Meanwhile, the sole surviving veteran of the Peloponnesian War is still alive, eking out a living in a DC retirement home, opposing the repeal of DADT.
I'm usually crying from laughing so hard here on teh Wonkette.
http://propagandaremix.com/nggallery/page-25/imag...
Well that gave me a bit of topical whiplash from yer earlier war poems. Good though to bring it back to the snark.
Uncle!
On another sad note, the last surviving veteran of the war in Afghanistan has not been born yet.
This is good news for John McCain!
(Someone had to do it.)
Well I heard he did crash a JN-4 "Jenny" while in training.
This means America just finished paying for World War I. The horrendous cost of a war started out of arrogance has reached the final tally. Well done, Mr. Buckles!
Given that most of the problems in the Middle East stem from the way the Ottoman Empire was divvied up by Britain and France after the war, we won't stop paying for World War I during the lifetime of anyone here on Wonkette. Thanks, Treaty of Lausanne!
Given that most of the ongoing problems in the Middle East stem from the way the Ottoman Empire was divvied up by Britain and France after the war, we won't stop paying for World War I during the lifetime of anyone here on Wonkette. Thanks, Treaty of Lausanne!
We lost him too soon.
Unexploded shells are found fairly often on the former Western Front so probably the last casualty won't be for a while yet.
I alway thought that when we reached a point when there were no more veterans, we would have a millenium of peace and prosperity or, at the least, had been doing something right for a while. However, since I am a veteran, I guess I won't see it.
Refight this war? Oh, we already have.
Refight this war? Oh, we already have.
Refight this war? Oh, we already have.
Refight this war? Oh, we already have.
Refight this war? Oh, we already have.
Refight this war? Oh, we already have.
Thom Yorke's "dancing" in the Lotus Flower video finally did in Buckles.
Huh. The British stiff upper lip must not extend to the British arteries.
Yeah!
NUMEROUS PLANES!
Good point, but many of those guys are still pissed about the fucking Crusades and those were 700 years before the United States got started.
I know this is a a funny website, but this post kind of comes off as "Lol, oldz dead"
Comments on this entry are closed.