Frank Woodruff Buckles, a onetime Missouri farm boy who was the last known living American veteran of World War I, has died. He was 110.
Buckles, who later spent more than three years in a Japanese POW camp as a civilian in the Philippines during World War II, died Sunday of natural causes at his home in Charles Town, W.Va., family spokesman David DeJonge said.
A total of 4,734,991 Americans served in the military during World War I.
When 108-year-old Harry Landis died in Sun City Center, Fla. on Feb. 4, 2008, Buckles became the war’s last standing U.S. veteran.
“I always knew I’d be one of the last because I was one of the youngest when I joined,” Buckles, then 107, told the New York Daily News. “But I never thought I’d be the last one.”
Read George Will on “The Last Doughboy” here.