Fullbore Friday

"But I never thought I'd be the last one."

When I first wrote this, there were still a couple left.

They are all gone now. Frank Buckles was one of the last. Extraordinary men doing what was ordinary for their generation.

What more can you say: thanks.

He was 16 when he shipped off to France in 1917 to join the ambulance corps with the serial No. 15577 -- one of 4.7 million Americans to serve in "The War to End All Wars" against Germany.

"I always knew I'd be one of the last because I was one of the youngest when I joined," Buckles said in his interview with the Daily News, after he became the last surviving member of those 4.7 million.

"But I never thought I'd be the last one."

Even after the war, Buckles couldn't escape the battlefield. In 1941, Buckles was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines while working as a purser for a steamship company. He languished for more than three years in prison camps before he was rescued in a military raid.

"I was never actually looking for adventure," Buckles once told The Associated Press. "It just came to me."

He also wasn't looking for the fame that came his way in 2008, when the second-to-last American veteran of World War I, Harry Richard Landis of Florida, passed away. But once he achieved the status of last surviving veteran, Buckles helped lobby to rededicate the existing District of Columbia World War I memorial on the National Mall in Washington as a national memorial.

With Buckles' passing, there are only two documented surviving veterans of The Great War left - 109-year-old Claude Choules and 110-year-old Florence Green, both of whom are British.

"Somebody has to pass it down. If I'm the last one, then I have to be the one to do it," Buckles told The News.

Hat tip URR.