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.”

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."