Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: MC_Honky on January 05, 2004, 07:44:40 AM
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Anybody know how many WWI vets are alive today? I was shocked when my friend- who is a doctor- called and told me that he's got a new patient who's a WWI vet! 104 years old and kicking. There's got to be a organization that tracks this sort of stuff. I read in the early 90's that the number was less than 15,000 worldwide. Wonder what it is today?
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My questimate is less than 1,000.
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Last 11 November they were about 36 in France.
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Probably a similar number in Britain.
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My grandfather belonged to the local WWI Veterans Association. They would meet regularly and I was invited many times. Of course I was a stupid teenager and didn't appreciate them like I would today.
I still recall them coming to my 8th grade history class and doing a "show and tell". My Grandfather was a truck driver. Something not a lot of people could do at the time. He got a chauffer's license in 1910 and spoke fluent German.
One of the prized possesions he left me was a book called "The Collier's Pictorial of the Great European War" published in 1916. It is amazingly even handed in its treatment of both sides of the conflict.
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I even heard that there was One- Just One vet left from the "Bore Wars." I also heard this in the early 90's. I'm sure he's dead by now.
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Most likely the ones still alive today joined up below age. My Grandfather was born in 1899 and joined the British Army (S.Staffs Regt) at only 15 years old; you were supposed to be 18. This was a very common occurance. Luckily my Grandfather made it through WWI but was taken POW near Ypres but nursed back to health by the Germans. He passed away in 1984.
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Originally posted by MC_Honky
Anybody know how many WWI vets are alive today? I was shocked when my friend- who is a doctor- called and told me that he's got a new patient who's a WWI vet! 104 years old and kicking. There's got to be a organization that tracks this sort of stuff. I read in the early 90's that the number was less than 15,000 worldwide. Wonder what it is today?
I got this from Flight Journal August 2003 and here's goes:
Henry Dotterel - - WWI's last surviving combat pilot - - died in January at the age of 106 in a veterans' hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He trained with the Royal Naval Air Service. On his second operational flight, an engine failure caused him to crash, and he was hospitialized for several months. He requalified as a fighter pilot and returned to operations in 1918 with the Royal Flying Corps, Squadron 208, flying Sopwith Camels. He served throughout the War.
Sound like he was the last pilot who was WWI vet.
Rafe35
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I believe there are only 7 Canadian WW1 vets left.
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According to the BBC, as of 11/11/2003, there were 27 WWI veterans surviving in Britain.
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Originally posted by Nashwan
According to the BBC, as of 11/11/20303, there were 27 WWI veterans surviving in Britain.
20303?
Man those WWI vets will live long!
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Nit-picker :eek:
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August last year there were only six Australian WW1 diggers left.
The last ANZAC died early 2002
Tronsky
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I tell chicks I'm a WWI vet to impress them.
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I remember reading somewere that there was 44 surviving U.S WW 1 veterans in 2003 .
36 Frenchmen.
12 Canadians.
6 Australian's
i'll try to find the artical ...
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Originally posted by Animal
I tell chicks I'm a WWI vet to impress them.
Is that to explain the peformance later in bed, or the reason you need viagra?
Tronsky
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More like why I like eating from the trench
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Originally posted by Animal
More like why I like eating from the trench
lol
Tronsky
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I seem to remember from the recent Armistice day BBC TV programmes that there is at least one WW1 pilot still alive or was until recently. Can anyone confirm that?
Both my Grandfathers served as part of the British army in the Great War, one was even wounded but I never met them and have no information on where or when. There are no family tales or pictures of them in uniform as after independance here in Ireland there was a collective amnesia about the whole thing even though 50,000 or so Irishmen died. Shameful really.
I did meet one veteran. A Sergeant Major he served in both wars in the British army and even shot down a German plane. I'm not sure in which war. He taught me and my friend, his grandson how to carry out army drill movements. He died before I was old enough to appreciate his stories.
Soon it will be down to one or two and we'll lose the link with the past.
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I seem to remember from the recent Armistice day BBC TV programmes that there is at least one WW1 pilot still alive or was until recently. Can anyone confirm that?
I thought they featured a Royal Navy pilot, who had flown a recce mission during the battle of Jutland, but couldn't find any more about it.
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This is really crazy but my Uncle- who is 80.- remembers as a boy, hanging out with Civil War vets (American). Civil War !!! I think the last one died in 1954. He was a confed. -soldier so I guess the confeds won after all. :)
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wow when you think about it like that, civil war doesnt seem that long ago, in 1940s and 50s i bet there was quite afew civil war vets left.
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One less WWI vet than earlier this week. :(
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=7&u=/ap/20040109/ap_on_re_us/obit_world_war_i_vet
Last Wounded U.S. WWI Veteran Dies at 108
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Alfred Pugh, the last known combat-wounded U.S. veteran of World War I, has died. He was 108, just 10 days short of his 109th birthday, when he died Wednesday.
Pugh, who often told visitors the key to a long life is "keep breathing," joined the Army in 1917 and fought in France during World War I with the 77th Infantry Division. In 1918, he was wounded during the Meusse-Argonne offensive, one of the war's bloodiest battles.
He died at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Bay Pines. VA officials said he was the oldest wounded combat veteran in the United States, and one of fewer than 1,000 remaining American World War I veterans.
Friends said he loved the attention that came with being known as the oldest wounded combat veteran in the United States. "It tickled him when the classes would come by the busload to see him," said Pugh's niece Carolyn Layton.
Born Jan. 17, 1895, in Everett, Mass., Pugh raised 16 foster children, played the organ into his 100s and was an avid football and baseball fan.
He is one of 10 veterans profiled in the book, "The Price of their Blood," published last month and co-authored by Jesse Brown, former U.S. secretary of Veterans Affairs.
He spoke French and was used overseas as an interpreter until the battle in the Argonne forest, when he inhaled mustard gas that left him unconscious and with chronic laryngitis.
"It was like a fog," Pugh said in an interview in 2002. "... We didn't get any gas masks until the day after it happened."
After the war he returned to Maine and worked as a railroad telegraph operator for 12 years before delivering mail for 26 years. He came to Florida in 1971.
In 1999, he was named chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honor, a prestigious medal bestowed by the French government.
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was on the news this am, he has a bud in the same vet hospital which is 106. they mentioned there were less than 600 still alive today.
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I read that of the 4.5 million Americans who served in WWI, only about 300 are still alive today.
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According to this recent article about the last wounded WWI vet dying, there are 1000 in the US.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/7672434.htm