January 8, 2006

The Last Warriors of the War to End All Wars

From Solomon a@ Solomonia comes this photo of: "Robley H. Rex [105 ], Kentucky's last living World War I veteran and one of only about twenty left in the country."

robrex03.jpg

True, they are not at rest yet,
but now they are indeed
apart, winnowed from failures,
they withdraw to an orbit
and turn with disinterested
hard energy, like the stars.

-- From My Sad Captains by Thom Gunn

Posted by Vanderleun at January 8, 2006 7:55 PM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

It's amazing how close we are to history -- and how rapidly our first-hand participants are leaving us.

Alistair Cooke was fond of telling people who shook his hand that, "You've just shaken the hand that shook the hand that shook hands with Abraham Lincoln."

It seems that when the Brit was a young correspondent, he was introduced to Oliver Wendell Homes. Holmes, a Civil War officer in the Union Army before he was a Supreme Court Justice, shook the Great Emancipator's hand.

My grandfather, who lived from 1896 to 1977, experienced tremendous social and technological changes, and was my living history lesson. A veteran of WWI, he talked often of his years in the cavalry before and after the War, but not of his combat in France.

I knew him only as an old man, crippled by arthritis, but I prefer to remember him as a Doughboy, striding across fields with a grin on his face and his Springfield slung over his shoulder.

Posted by: Mike Lief at May 9, 2006 12:20 PM