Obit

Last American WWI Soldier Dies

Served as an ambulance driver in France.

It's the end of a generation. The last living American to serve in World War I died at the age of 110 on Sunday. Frank Buckles enlisted in the army in 1917 after lying about his age, and was promptly sent to England and then to France, where he drove an ambulance near the Western Front. After the war, he worked in a shipping line that took him to Manila, where he was imprisoned by the Japanese following the attack on Pearl Harbor. In his later years, Buckles became the go-to representative of the nearly 2 million men who served in the American Expeditionary Forces in France, being named grand marshal at the national Memorial Day Parade in 2007 and appearing before a Senate subcommittee on a World War I memorial on the National Mall. After Buckles, a former nurse and a former sailor, both English, are the only living people known to have served in the war in any capacity.