Monday, May 25, 2009
Frank Buckles
More Americans died in World War I than in Korea or Vietnam, but unlike those conflicts, whose participants have been honored in the nation’s capital, the veterans of the “war to end all wars” have yet to get their memorial. On the National Mall in Washington, DC, there stand memorials to those who served in the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam. Meanwhile, the more than 4.7 million Americans who fought in WWI go forgotten, including the 116,561 soldiers who died.
Frank Buckles is trying to change that, along with the World War I Memorial Foundation. Buckles is the last surviving U.S. WWI veteran, and despite his age of 108, he is serving as the face of the foundation’s campaign to get Washington to finally honor the United States’ veterans of the “Great War.” The only memorial that does exist in DC is the one dedicated in 1931 to the local residents who lost their lives in the conflict. That memorial is reportedly in need of repair.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Frank Woodruff Buckles (Experiencing War, Stories from the Veterans History Project, Library of Congress)
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