I saw the news about Frank Buckles via Mental Floss. Rather odd I couldn’t find it easily through the other “papers of record” earlier in the week.
Two known documented participants remain. One retired sailor in Australia and a waitress in the UK; for some reason the RAF recruited women to wait tables during World War I.
My personal connection to the Great War was only through my grandfather’s stories about those years. When the conflict began he was 10 and as it dragged on, I’m confident his family worried about getting involved since Grandpa had older siblings who could’ve been drafted once the US joined. It panned out in his favor thankfully.
On Grandma’s side of the family she had a cousin who may have been a veteran. In the late Seventies we got to meet Cousin Frank in nearby Gibson City (in relation to Champaign-Urbana) and he quickly became a great friend to us all until we moved away to Houston. I don’t know if he volunteered or was drafted but Frank was a lucky man. He contracted influenza during an outbreak at basic training and missed out on the fighting in Europe. Frank’s good fortune continued too because it was a strain he said killed a few people on the base.