Almost 4.7 million Americans answered the call to service during World War I. Frank Buckles was the last survivor. He died on February 28, 2011 at his West Virgina farm at the age of 110. Death was due to natural causes.
Buckles quit high school to enlist in the Army at 16 on August 14, 1917. He lied about his age in order to serve. He ended up in France, driving an ambulance behind the front lines.
After the war, he traveled on commercial ships as a purser. He was caught in Manila when the Japanese invaded the Phillippines in 1941. He served 38 months as a civilian prisoner of the Japanese during World War II.
In 1953, he and his wife bought a cattle farm in West Virginia where he lived for the rest of his life.
His passing leaves only two veterans of the 65 million who served in the conflict: an Australian man 109 and a British woman 108.
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