One of few surviving World War I veterans lived in Vernon County

The memory of World War I, "The Great War," may have faded from the collective historical consciousness of the United States, but it is still vivid in the mind of 106-year-old Frank Woodruff Buckles; one of a very few remaining individuals who can recount the events of that bygone conflict.

Frank Buckles was born on a farm near Bethany, Mo., in 1901. His family moved to Vernon County in 1910, where they spent five years before leaving for Oklahoma. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in Oklahoma City during the summer of 1917, just months after President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Imperial Germany.

The 16-year-old boy managed to convince an army captain, who asked for a birth certificate, that he was really 21. "I explained that birth certificates in Missouri were not public record at the time I was born … and he took it at that," Buckles happily recalls while sitting in the study of his home in Charles Town, W. Va.

After basic training at Fort Logan, Colo., Buckles volunteered as an ambulance driver and was sent to Fort Riley, Kan., for training. "An old, knowledgeable sergeant said, 'if you want to get to France in a hurry, go into the ambulance service because the French are begging for ambulance drivers,' so I applied for that," Buckles said.

Buckles shipped out to England aboard the ocean liner Carpathia-- which Titanic enthusiasts will remember as the rescuer of the doomed White Star liner.

Buckles spent several months in Winchester, England, where he waited to be sent across the Channel. "I was very anxious to get to France," Buckles relates. The young soldier was finally sent to France as an escort to a lieutenant.

Buckles never saw combat in France; instead, he spent the remainder of the war doing various short assignments, such as managing a warehouse. In regard to Armistice Day, Buckles remembers that he didn't experience anything like the excitement that he has read about the event since then.

He does relate a funny incident while guarding German POWs. "I remember this day … this must have been a payday, because I saw them coming back in the evening … 20 German prisoners … one of the German soldiers was carrying the rifle and another one was pushing a wheelbarrow with the guard in it. I wish I could have made a sketch of that." Apparently, the guard had been drinking heavily and the Germans had nowhere better to go.

Buckles proudly and vividly recounts the day, after the war, when he met General John J. Pershing at a hotel reception in Oklahoma City.

"After I passed Pershing, the general sent the sergeant after me … he was interested in my uniform and also where I was born. Well, when I told him that I was born on my father's farm north of Bethany in Harrison County, Mo., he said, 'Just 42 miles from Linn County, where I was born.'"

Buckles believes Pershing had recognized the young corporal's accent as being from his home region. General Pershing, for whom proper military dress was very important, had also noticed the young corporal's tailored uniform. "He demanded perfection," Buckles states about the general.

After leaving the Army in 1920, Buckles worked on various steamship lines, sailing all over the world and particularly in South America. The beginning of the Second World War found him in Manila in December 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Buckles spent most of that war in two Japanese prison camps in the Philippines, including Santo Tomas and Los Banos. His memories of the second great world conflict are not as pleasant as those from the first. "People were starving to death, dying every day," he says about the camps.

Buckles fondly relates the day American paratroopers and Filipino guerillas liberated Los Banos. He remembers going into the barracks to put on a clean starched shirt which he had saved for years. "By that time, they had set the building on fire, and when I went out the door with my rucksack on, all dressed up for the relief, the roof fell in." He calmly recounts his narrow escape, after having survived three years of hardship.

Buckles returned to the United States and married his sweetheart, Audrey Mayo, whose picture he had cherished throughout the long imprisonment.

Buckles claims he always knew he would live to be a hundred. He credits his long life to his love of calisthenics and a glass of red wine a day.

The Library of Congress has interviewed Frank Buckles as part of the Veterans History Project. He has also been a supporter of the Pershing Park Memorial Association in Laclede, Mo., of which he was recently made an honorary member.

Will Tollerton can be reached at (660)963-2538, or at wjt073@yahoo.com