Category: Memorials

March 4, 2011

“I was never actually looking for adventure, it just came to me.”
Frank Buckles, the “Last Doughboy,” 2008 interview
The Associated Press

“When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. . .” Ernest Hemingway, Men at War.  As you’ll read, Frank Buckles – World War One’s last doughboy – was adept at the kind of understatement in his quote above. In his remarkable 110 years, Frank Buckles made understatement his art form. Although, it’s true, he did slip up occasionally, like when he was 16 and overstated his age to enlist to fight in the Great War. But his claim that he was “not looking for adventure” is one of his more memorably conservative self-appraisals. And, beginning last week, “adventure” came calling again, despite his quiet passing in West Virginia on February 27th. Gone, Frank Buckles, U.S. Army Corporal, 1st Fort Riley Casual [unassigned] Detachment, in death, the last American to have served in the Great War, the War of the Nations, the “war to end war.”

To Corporal Buckles’ great disappointment, though, he never served on the front lines of the western front, but not for lack of trying: he once jokingly said, “Didn’t I make every effort?” The record bears him out. As an ambulance driver behind the lines in 1918, Buckles had been distant from the worst of the fighting in the Marne valley. With succinct understatement, however, he remembered, “I saw the results.” Perhaps underneath his modesty, he recalled much the same vision that inspired World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon, to write:

Do You Remember The Stretcher-Cases Lurching Back
With Dying Eyes And Lolling Heads–Those Ashen-Grey
Masks Of The Lads Who Once Were Keen And Kind And Gay?
Have You Forgotten Yet?…
Look Up, And Swear By The Green Of The Spring That You’ll Never Forget.

Insult and Injury. The unnecessary controversy continues over whether or not Frank W. Buckles, America’s last WWI veteran, ought to lay in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. It brings with it a bad taste, bordering on disgust. Our nation’s two congressional leaders are embarrassing themselves, and for no good reason. Since this began a few days ago, neither Speaker of the House John Boehner nor Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, both of whom must sign off on the proposal, have been forthright (or courageous) enough to explain their reasoning, if any. If they are invertebrates on something like this, so reliant on spokespersons to do their talking, to do their dirty work . . . well, it’s very un-Frank Buckles, to say the very least. If their attitude signifies a royal decree, perhaps they hope public distaste will fade as discussions of budgets, spending cuts, and Charlie Sheen’s return to tv this week. But I don’t think we ought to let Charlie Buckles down.

The Persistence of Memory.  Remember Mr. Speaker, your solemn words just four months ago Veterans Day 2010: “Today, we pause to pay proper respect to the heroes who have donned the uniform of our country and — along with their families — sacrificed so much so that we may enjoy the blessings of freedom.”

Reid’s negative position is difficult to understand as well. His record on veterans affairs is distinguished. The sight of Boehner and Reid digging in their feet on this when they can agree on almost nothing else is, to put it mildly, surprising, bordering on mysterious and foolish. There’s just got to be a principle or two lurking here, particularly since this issue is embarrassing to both leaders. Perhaps they don’t realize this? Considering their own silence on this, all we can do is speculate, and comment on some possibilities.

The “Not Just Anyone” Test. First, gentlemen, we all understand that “not just anyone” may be accorded the signal national tribute of lying in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. Agreed. No argument there. And in truth, I don’t believe this issue motivates Boehner or Reid, but it should. Surely Frank Buckles represents more than an individual. He represents the literal last soldier of a generation – the more than four and a half million U.S. WWI veterans, two million of whom served in combat on the killing grounds called battlefields of that unthinkably cruel war. From mid-1917 to the armistice on November 11, 1918, more than 115,000 Americans died, and nearly 400,000 were wounded standing duty as the German army launched their last offensive to win the war. As the final representative of that group of men and women, Frank Buckles, both the man and the icon, passes the “not just anybody” test with colors flying.

The Floodgate Test. Of course, there may be more requests for this illustrious honor. Yet, as far as precedent is concerned, should Frank Buckles be awarded this singular homage, how many others in future will be able to meet the very precedent Corporal Buckles would thereby set? Yes, in years to come, the last U.S. veteran of all our wars will pass away, from World War 2 to Korea to Vietnam to Persian Gulf to Afghanistan. Using the precedent of Frank Buckles, should he or she be allowed to lay in honor in the Rotunda, each too will indeed have a valid call on the same tribute based upon the “Frank Buckles precedent.” And, my larger point is, they ought to lay in honor, just as Frank Buckles ought to lay in honor, and each, in turn, set precedent for all who follow. It’s a precedent we all can live with.

As years grow into decades – and in Frank Buckles’ case, decades expanded to nearly a century – our nation needs reminders of a glorious past where courage overtook fear. The First World War brought carnage unthinkable in prior history, but within the expanding industrial revolution, horrors were unleashed with devastating weapons, munitions, tanks, and artillery; the subversion of chemistry and physics produced mustard gas, phosgene, and chlorine;  the elements themselves combined with trench warfare conditions to kill tens of thousands through exposure and disease; and let’s not overlook the often careless and craven leadership on all sides that sent thousands to their deaths in senseless charge after charge through barbed wire and mud directly into enemy machine guns and grenades.

Let The Memories Persist. The Great War is a war to be remembered, and often, and to the extent that Frank Buckles reminds us of the suffering and bravery and senselessness of the “war to end war,” he will serve as a learning moment for us all. It’s the kind of service Corporal Frank Buckles (1911-2011) undertook in 1918, and later in life as he stood often to propose a permanent WWI memorial in Washington, D.C. Laying in honor is an honor he would not have sought, but in his understated way, it’s one that “Pershing’s Last Patriot” would have quietly appreciated.