What is Lost When Veterans Pass?
Flinty-eyed assessment may be easier without the emotional tangle inevitable in writing about parents and grandparents who have been anointed virtual demigods. “Historians will be less influenced by the passions and prejudices of the people living through those events,” predicts Col. Lance Betros, head of West Point’s history department. “There will be less sentimentalism and pandering to particular audiences.” The passing of veterans from earlier wars offers clues about how this cultural transition will unfold. For one thing, it will be a protracted farewell: the last Revolutionary War vet lingered until after the Civil War, dying in 1869 at the age of 109, while some War of 1812 veterans lived to see the 20th century, and Civil War veterans lived into the 1950s. The last Spanish-American War survivor died in 1992, at 106. Of the two million Americans who fought in France in World War I, the last survivor, Frank W. Buckles, turned 108 on February 1.
