Frank Buckles: World War I Veteran Still Alive

(two articles on the same day claiming a man to be the last surving WWI vet. All we know for sure is that there can be very few of these heroes left alive._

ABC4 News: Frank Buckles - World War I Veteran Still Alive
by Joe Chevalier

I study quite a bit of history and I have always been fascinated with the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. A few years ago I read a story about Alberta Martin, the last Civil War widow to die. How is that possible? Well, she married a Civil War soldier that was in his 80s when she was 21. She died in 2004.

I sometimes look for such peculiar stories and I found one last year and have been following it since.

Frank Buckles is believed to be one of less than a handful, if not the only, surviving World War I veteran in the world. He joined the Army in 1917 by telling his recruiter he was 21 when he was only 16 years old. Here is a quote from him:

"I was just 16 and didn’t look a day older. I confess to you that I lied to more than one recruiter. I gave them my solemn word that I was 18, but I’d left my birth certificate back home in the family Bible. They’d take one look at me and laugh and tell me to go home before my mother noticed I was gone. Somehow I got the idea that telling an even bigger whopper was the way to go. So I told the next recruiter that I was 21 and darned if he didn’t sign me up on the spot! I enlisted in the Army on 14 August 1917"

Frank was still doing interviews as recently as last fall but there are rumors that he has quickly fallen into bad health. If he is still alive he will be 110 years old on February 1st, 2011. When he was asked about the secret to living so long he said, "When you start to die...don't"

Frank Buckles lives on a farm in Charles Town, West Virginia.