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[交流] 【Share】Last American World War I Veteran Dies

"I did not lie. Nobody calls me a liar!"
Mr. Buckles had us laughing that day in March of 2008, when he came to the Pentagon for the unveiling of a set of new portraits of himself and other World War I veterans. He admitted he exaggerated his age, twice, in order to join the Army in 1917, when he was just 15 years old. But with a wink he said that did not make him a liar.
"I had added some years onto my age and was 18. The recruiter said, 'Sorry, but you have to be 21.' So I came back later and I had aged. I was 21.
And he was still lying about his age, just a little bit.
"I do not feel that I am any older than you are," said Buckles.
Buckles left the army in 1920 and years later he went to work for a shipping company in the Philippines. When World War II broke out, he and other Americans there were put in prison camps by the occupying Japanese forces. Although he was not a soldier at that time, he spent more than three years in the notorious Los Banos prison. The cup he ate out of for all that time is in the background of his 2008 portrait, which now hangs with eight others along one of the Pentagon's many corridors.
In a statement issued Monday, President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle praised Buckles, saying he continued to serve America until his death, as the Honorary Chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation. The Obamas said they join the Buckles family "in celebrating a remarkable life that reminds us of the true meaning of patriotism and our obligations to each other as Americans."...

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