It seems a bit ludicrous to refer to ANY war as the "the great war". I did not confer that upon World War I. Newsmen did it many years ago. Some also called it "the war to end all wars". They missed it on both accounts.
Frank Buckles was a sixteen-year old growing up in Missouri. He lied about his age and managed to get in the service, and was soon sent to France with an ambulance outfit. A lot of those were needed. This was the last trench war, although trenches and foxholes were common in World War II. These men lived and died for months in a network of trenches. A giant shell coming in could bury the men in a trench if it hit close enough. I visited the battlefield at Verdun in France, while on leave from my unit in Germany. in the fifties.I saw there a scene that still haunts me. It was a trench where several large shells had direct hits. The men in that trench were buried standing up with their rifles still in their hands. The rifles were armed with bayonets. The men have never been removed and the tips and portions of bayonets still protrude from the ground. It was like those men still standing there are to remind us of the horror and awful cost of war.
Frank Buckles died last Sunday. He was the last living veteran of World War I at the age of 110.
This war introduced mustard gas to the element of warfare. It also brought the first planes dropping death and destruction from the skies. World War II would make the airplane and bombing a vital part of the war effort. I saw the remains of the great city of Mainz, in Germany, after one night of being bombed. About seventy percent of it was destroyed. It was in this old city along the Rhine that Gutenberg printed the first copy of a Bible.
It was from this war that we received the plaintive poem, "In Flanders Fields". It was this war which inspired such songs as "Over There". Many of those soldiers remained over there. There were 4.7 million American soldiers in that war. We were in it for less than two years.
Now they are all gone. When "taps" was played at Frank Buckles funeral it ended a time in history. We could wish it would end all wars, but it won't until the Prince of Peace makes his re-entry. Then, like the spiritual sings: "Ain't goin' to study war no more."
