Happy Birthday, Frank Woodruff Buckles
Fellow West Virginian, Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last surviving World War I doughboy who also found himself in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Second World War turns a hundred and ten years old today according to the Herald-Mail;
A story in the May 30, 2010, edition of Parade magazine on Buckles said he lied about his age in 1917 when he was 16 so he could enlist. The Army sent him to France, where he drove ambulances and motorcycles. After the armistice, he helped return German prisoners of war to their country.
In 1941, he was working in Manila for the American President Line, a shipping company. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines during World War II, Buckles was captured and spent 3 1/2 years in a prisoner-of-war camp before he was rescued by American forces when they retook the Island nation.
Mr. Buckles is the subject of a movie “Pershing’s Last Patriot” to be released next year.
You can read about him at the Smithsonian Magazine.
Thanks to Old Trooper for the link.
Category: Veterans Issues
Happy Birthday, dear man. The world is a better place because you’re in it! 🙂
i think it is sad we can no longer get oral histories from that generation.
Had an old sergeant who was a retired Air Force Master Chief Sergeant at my academy in the 1960s.
Signed up and went to France as an underage recruit – put a piece of paper in his shoe with 18 on it so he could tell the recruiter that he was over 18. He was an infantry Doughboy who figured out that thiose flying machines going over the trenches mgiht have somrthing going for them.
Worked Ordnance in Jimmie Stewart’s 8th Air Force Squadron in WWII.
A true American hero of the old school. I was blessed to have known him.