The timing of deaths among WWI's final survivors continues to be remarkable as today the Associated Press reports only one WWI veteran is now alive in the United States. This comes after the death of Harry Richard Landis, 108, who passed away Monday in a Florida nursing home. Over the past few weeks this blog has covered the deaths of French and German WWI veterans, as well as the last American commander who fought with volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. Our ties to that era are disappearing at an alarming rate. Frank Buckles, 107, is now the final remaining American vet of the WWI era.
As the AP reports, Landis never served overseas but enlisted during wartime in 1918, training as a recruit for 60 days before the armistice came. Here he recalls his unit's final march as the war ended:
“We went down through the girls college, marching down the street. We
got down to the courthouse square and there was a wall around this
courthouse. We got to the wall and [the drill instructor] didn’t know
what to do and we were hup, two, three, four, hup, two, three, four,”
Landis said, laughing at the memory. “Finally, we jumped up on the wall
and kept going until we got to the courthouse — hup, two, three, four —
and he said dismissed.”
Landis tried to sign-up for service in WWII at the age of 42, but was denied for being too old to fight.
Of the roughly 4.7-million Americans who served during WWI, the Veterans Administration told the St. Petersburg Times that spotty record keeping makes it difficult to keep track of how many of these vets are still out there.
The VA tried to reach out and find other survivors last year, said
Jim Benson, VA spokesman. There were a few leads, but nothing panned
out.
"I think it's amazing for us to realize that you have
this population of individuals who served during the first great war,
and at that time, it was the war to end all wars," Benson said. "Soon,
we will no longer have a living contact. It will all be from the
histories left behind."
