Great Memorial Day Column - "The Last Doughboy"

There's a marvelous Memorial Day column up today by George Will: The Last Doughboy. It's a short piece about Frank Buckles, who is the last surviving American veteran of World War I:

CHARLESTOWN, W.Va. -- Numbers come precisely from the agile mind and nimble tongue of Frank Buckles, who seems bemused to say that 4,734,991 Americans served in the military during America's involvement in the First World War and 4,734,990 are gone. He is feeling fine, thank you for asking.

The eyes of the last doughboy are still sharp enough for him to be a keen reader, and his voice is still deep and strong at age 107. He must have been a fine broth of a boy when, at 16, persistence paid off and he found, in Oklahoma City, an Army recruiter who believed, or pretended to, the fibs he had unavailingly told to Marine and Navy recruiters in Kansas about being 18. He grew up on a Missouri farm, not far from where two eminent generals were born -- John "Black Jack" Pershing and Omar Bradley.

I suggest that you do yourself a favor and read this before tending to you holiday BBQs - it's a delightful little read.

One of the reasons why stories like this appeal to me is because three of my four grandparents served in World War I, and a great uncle died from influenza while waiting to sail over to France as an American soldier.

On my Mother's side, my Grandfather and Grandmother met while serving in the War. Grandma Kelly was a nurse and Grandpa Kelly was an orderly serving at Harvard Base Hospital No. 5 in France. On my Father's side of my family, Grandpa Casey served as a soldier/baker, and Great Uncle Michael Garvey (Grandma Casey's brother) died in the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918, which decimated entire encampments of American soldiers still in the United States waiting to be sent overseas to the front.

I can still remember my Grandma Kelly bringing me, when I was a young kid, to Base Hospital No. 5 reunions up in Boston in the early 70s. To think now that there's only one veteran left from a war that people I knew and loved were in is personally astounding. God bless him...