A tribute to Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, from nearby Jefferson County, W. Va., died Sunday. He was 110 years old.
http://tinyurl.com/4qhpqph
The Tentacle March 2, 2011
The Humble Patriot
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, from nearby Jefferson County, W. Va., died Sunday. He was 110 years old.
I first noticed that Mr. Buckles had passed away in an Hagerstown Herald-Mail article, written by Dave McMillion, who reported that Mr. Buckles “lived with his daughter, Susannah Buckles Flanagan, at Gap View, the family farm off old West Virginia 9, has been the subject of wide media and congressional attention in recent years.”
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http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=4259
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20110314 sdosm A tribute to Frank Woodruff Buckles
More material – some of which ended up on the cutting room floor to get the piece to make word limit:
Almost four months after newspapers in Europe were reporting that World War I officially ended on October 3 – 2010 that is; Frank W. Buckles, the last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, from nearby Jefferson County, W. Va., died Sunday.
I first noticed that Mr. Buckles had died in Hagerstown Herald-Mail article, written by Dave McMillion. For many, World War I is the stuff of ‘ancient’ history. My grandfather served in World War I as a ferrier and he passed away almost 50 years ago. So as one may imagine, both news items really captured my curiosity.
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A November 11, 2005 CNN article went on to observe, “More than 10 million troops died before the war ended with Germany's surrender. Of the U.S. troops, more than 116,000 died and more than 200,000 were wounded.
“Long-lived veterans are common among America's warriors. The last veteran to fight in the American Revolution died at age 109 in 1869, according to Defense Department statistics.
“Other wars and the ages of their last veterans the year they died: the War of 1812, 105, 1905; the Indian Wars, 101, 1973; the Mexican War, 98, 1929; the Civil War, 112, 1958; and the Spanish-American War, 106, 1992.
Until 1953, we celebrated the Veterans Day as Armistice Day and its beginnings may be found in what we had previously understood as a commemoration of the end of World War I – on November 11, 1918.
Nevertheless, on October 1, 2010, Der Speigel, a weekly German magazine published in Hamburg, announced: “Germany will make its last reparations payment for World War I on Oct. 3, settling its outstanding debt from the 1919 Versailles Treaty and quietly closing the final chapter of the conflict that shaped the 20th century.
“Oct. 3, the 20th anniversary of German unification, will also mark the completion of the final chapter of World War I with the end of reparations payments 92 years after the country's defeat...”
The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper published in London, England, went one-step further on September 28, with a headline that declared: “First World War officially ends” – “The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies…”
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For many, World War I is the stuff of ‘ancient’ history. Perhaps what is fascinating about Mr. Buckles is that he was living link to a bygone era that most people only know about by reading history books.
Although the Spanish-American War is considered by many to be the first “media war,” and was meticulously covered, primarily in print, by American newspapers; World War I is but a remote footnote in history for most Americans. One may argue that it was no more visually documented – in pictures – that perhaps the American Civil War or the Spanish American War.
“It's a war that's out of mind,” says Sean Flynn, who teaches World War I history at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, South Dakota, according to the CNN article. “The U.S. entered it late and we have no real connection to it.”
Professor Flynn further explains, “Unlike the wars that followed, World War I doesn't have the visual record so important to becoming part of American consciousness…”
Many agree with Professor Flynn who was credited in the article with observing that the impact of World War “can be linked to many problems facing the world today, including conflict in the Balkans and the rise of Arab nationalism that occurred after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.”
Indeed, for a deeper understanding of the current turmoil sweeping across the Middle East in recent weeks, one must understand the history of World War I.
For those who are only vaguely familiar with World War I, the CNN article sums it up succinctly, “World War I, fueled by intense nationalism and conflicting economic and colonial interests, began in the Balkans in 1914 and quickly spread across Europe because of military alliances. The major allied powers were Great Britain, France and Russia, and they were opposed by Germany, Austria-Hungary and a few others.”
In many ways, we are still reeling from the consequences of World War 1 and the horrifically ill conceived 1919 Versailles Treaty.
For social and economic historians, 1918 and the end of World War 1 - and the rise of Arab nationalism that occurred after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire - is the intellectual catalyst for revisiting a matrix of complicated social, political and economic events, of which we are still trying to figure out and negotiate the ramifications.
World War 1 marked the disintegration of the Napoleonic era of world economic and political order manifested by the doomed German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. It was the end of three centuries of European world domination. Europe never recovered. World War II, twenty years later was the final nail in the coffin.
It was only a miracle that the war did not start with the Second Boer War of 1899-1902, the Spanish American war of 1898 or the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War.
Economic-historians understand that World War 1 - the “Great War,” a designation previously held-out for the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s, was actually the result of almost two decades of “economic warfare” between Europe’s ailing great empires in various stages of economic deterioration and collapse.
The localized conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, which eventually sparked the war, was the straw that broke the camel’s back as the empires of Europe sought a military solution to their economic woes. The result, as you could only imagine, was the complete opposite as the gross national product of the warring European protagonists shrank precipitously.
Austria-Hungary did not react militarily for almost a month to the events of June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, when Gavrilo Princip shot and killed the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Only after Austria-Hungary had been assured of financial support from Germany did it react.
The world is still reeling from the adjustments caused by the destruction of these empires; especially in the Middle East as artificial national boundaries were formed for many of the nations that to this day cannot get along. For example, to this day, Syria still does not recognize Lebanon as a separate country, but a territory of Syria in rebellion.
A point not missed by many historians. Der Speigel quoted Professor Gerd Krumeich, a German historian who has specialized in World War I: “It's a historical curiosity that the Versailles Treaty should continue to have a financial impact to this day. Krumeich went on to say Hitler's rise to power had its roots in Germany's deep sense of injustice at the 1919 treaty that gave Germany sole responsibility for the war and forced it to make crippling payments…
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