This week, we will commemorate the 100th anniversary of end of hostilities in World War I. The Allied forces and their American compatriots (we never formally joined the European Allied nations) declared victory on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month: November 11, 1918.

Had America not entered the war, its outcome would have been uncertain. The German Army had never given an inch of its country’s soil to its adversaries, even after more than four years of conflict. They were surviving on sheer will, yes, but still holding the line — until the Americans arrived.

From the Farm to the Great War

One of those “over there” was Frank Buckles. He was born in 1901 and raised on a farm in Missouri. By the time he was 15, he was well familiar with draft horses and the then still new developments in farm machinery.

When America went to war in 1917, he tried desperately to join the military. Rejected by the Marines and Navy because of he was only 16, he told an Army recruiter his birth record was in the family Bible. The recruiter bought the lie. Frank Buckles formally became a Doughboy.

“I was a snappy soldier,” he said. “All gung ho.” He had volunteered to drive ambulances, thinking that would get him to France sooner.

Yet his youthful vision of heroic combat foundered once he arrived in Great Britain. After mundane duty ferrying-around officials in England, he finally got to France. He drove ambulances and escorted surrendered German soldiers back to their country. He saw firsthand how war can break men and ruin nations.

“The little French children were hungry,” he said. “We’d feed the children. To me, that was a pretty sad sight.”

Frank also recalled the ongoing commitment of the French to defend their homeland. “I have a vivid of memory of the French soldiers,” he recalled in 2001. “They had very, very little money. But they were having wine and singing the ‘Marsellaise’ with enthusiasm. And I inquired, ‘What is the occasion?’ They were going back to the front. Can you imagine that?” 

After hostilities ended, Frank larked around Paris a bit. Instead of money, he used a large supply of cigarettes he has gotten. They were in demand enough to earn him a stay at the legendary Hotel Ritz.

In January 1920, he sailed home on the USS Pocahontas.

Guest of the Japanese

After working in banking, Frank was drawn by the lure of the sea. But then World War II hit, and he found himself in Manila on December 7, 1941. He spent three and one-half years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines, losing 50 pounds in the process. He and his comrades were rescued by the 11th U.S. Airborne in February 1945.

Starting in 1954, Frank and his wife Audrey settled into farming his family’s Gap View Farm near Charles Town, West Virginia. His ancestor Robert Buckles was among those who had begun the small community in 1732.

According to his website, “Frank Buckles continued to work on his farm and, up until the age of 106 still drove his tractor.” After Audrey died, Frank lived with his daughter, Susannah. He died in 2011, age 110.

Frank Buckles was the last of the 4,734,991 Americans who served in the “Great War,” the “war to end all wars.” As his painful experience in the Philippines testifies, the promise that the 1914-1918 conflict would be the world’s last was quickly proven false.

No “Wars to End All Wars”

Human nature is such that any claim that a given war will be the final one is false. This does not mean we should cease efforts to avoid armed conflict. Rather, when politicians herald a “League of Nations” or the ironically-named “United Nations” as a means of bringing about global peace, we should be prepared to stifle our laughter.

Frank Buckles lived long enough to witness the horror of World War II. He lived through the Korean and Vietnam wars, the Gulf War, and our multi-year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

During his lifetime, tens of millions of people were slaughtered by Communist governments in the then-Soviet Union and China, not to mention Cambodia, North Korea and what was North Vietnam. Then there was the murder of millions in places like the Congo and Sudan and the smaller-scale but still horrible killing fields in many regions.

Despite the bitter proof of man’s fallenness, Frank Buckles and his millions of Doughboy colleagues did not serve in vain. They showed the world that when a nation like Germany torpedoed our ships and tried to incite a foreign power (Mexico) to invade us, we would do what we needed to do to stop it.

Honoring Those Who Serve

There are, today, millions of men and women like Frank Buckles willing to do whatever is needed to stand up for America. At the risk of their lives. Many do, every day.

May we never forget Frank Buckles, who is now interred at Arlington National Cemetery. And may we never forget the sacrifices of our veterans or of those who, day after day, stand guard so that we can live free.