Frank Buckles' enlistment photo into the U.S. Army in 1917, left,
and Buckles receives an American flag during Memorial Day activities
at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, May 26, 2008. (AP)
Frank Woodruff Buckles was born February 1, 1901, in Bethany, Missouri. He lived and attended schools in Coffey and Walker, Missouri, and at the age of 15 moved with his family to Oklahoma, where he worked at a bank and attended high school in Oakwood, a small frontier town.
Frank Woodruff Buckles enlisted in the United States Army on August 14, 1917, at the age of sixteen, after being turned away by the United States Marines and United States Navy due to his age. He was assigned serial number 15577, and assigned to Fort Logan, Colorado. He earned the rank of Corporal, and drove ambulances and motorcycles for the Army’s First Fort Riley Casual Detachment. He traveled across England and France and witnessed the European Theatre of World War I.
Following the signing of the Armistice in 1918, ending World War I, Corporal Buckles was assigned to a prisoner-of-war escort company to return prisoners to Germany. Corporal Buckles was discharged from the United States Army in 1920.
While working as a civilian for the American President Lines, a shipping company in Manila, Philippines, Corporal Buckles was captured by the Japanese on December 8, 1942, the day following the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. Corporal Buckles spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war in Japanese prison camps at Santo Tomas and Los Baños, and was rescued by the 11th Airborne Division on February 23, 1945. Corporal Buckles returned to the United States, married Audrey Mayo of Pleasanton, California, in 1946, and settled in the San Francisco, California area.
Frank Woodruff Buckles retired from work in the shipping industry and in January, 1954, moved with his family to raise cattle on the 330 acre Gap View Farm near Charles Town, West Virginia, the area where his forefather, Robert Buckles, settled in 1732.
With the death of 108-year-old Richard Landis on February 4, 2008, Frank Woodruff Buckles became the last surviving American World War I veteran. Corporal Buckles, as the lone survivor of the Great War, continued to serve America and dedicated his final years to ensuring that the sacrifices of his fellow “Doughboys” were properly commemorated by continuing relentlessly advocating for the refurbishing of the District of Columbia War Memorial and its establishment as the National World War I Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and in his home state of Missouri, and as the Honorary Chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation.
Corporal Buckles was honored by presidents and high-ranking officials at the White House, on Capitol Hill, and at the Pentagon, and in 2008 was awarded the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ Gold Medal of Merit and also the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry’s Knight Commander of the Court of Honor by the Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A. For his service during World War I, the United States government awarded Corporal Buckles the World War I Victory Medal and the Army of Occupation of Germany Medal and qualified him for four Overseas Service Bars, and he was awarded the Legion of Honor by French president Jacques Chirac.
The last surviving American World War I veteran, Frank Woodruff Buckles, died at the age of 110 on February 27, 2011, at his home in Charles Town, West Virginia.
At the death of Frank Woodruff Buckles, a grateful nation rose up to give honor to the last survivor of a war in which five million Americans served and to a man who stood as a representative of his former comrades-in-arms and their sacrifices; and
Even as our nation mourns his passing, we also celebrate the remarkable life of Frank Woodruff Buckles, a true patriot and the final torchbearer of “the War to End all Wars.”