it comes in pints?

The Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month

Eighty-eight years ago today, the guns of the First World War fell silent. And via Andrea, I've learned that this extraordinary gentleman was actually there at the time:

Gov. Honors Florida's Last Surviving World War I Vet, 111

BRADENTON -- Ernest Charles Pusey, 111 years old and nattily attired in a dress shirt and light blue cardigan, smiled slightly when Gov. Jeb Bush walked in his trailer Friday and gave him a medal for helping win World War I.

...

Pusey is indeed special. He's one of just 15 living World War I veterans _ out of nearly 5 million who served _ and the only one in Florida. He was in the U.S. Navy from 1917 to 1919 aboard the battleship USS Wyoming, which spent much of the war patrolling the sea lanes around the British Isles.

We may have whipped the Kaiser's ass, but Uncle Sam seems to have REALLY taken his sweet time on this one...

Bush said Pusey didn't recall getting a medal after the war and nobody could find any evidence that he had. So giving it to him for Veteran's Day seemed fitting.

"Ernie Pusey is 111 years old, he is the oldest Floridian, third oldest American, fifth oldest in the world, the oldest surviving World War I veteran, and it's an honor to be able to give him his World War I medal,'' Bush said.

The first step was actually finding a World War I Victory Medal, since it's not like the U.S. government has them lying around anymore. Rocky McPherson, executive director of the Florida Department of Veterans' Affairs, got on the case and finally tracked one down in a shop in Quantico, Va.

Thank you, sir, and thank you to all who served and who continue to serve. Any words fail, but thanks to Nightfly, I have some of the Bard's that are far better than any I could come up with:

Let me speak proudly: tell the constable

We are but warriors for the working-day;

Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd

With rainy marching in the painful field;

There's not a piece of feather in our host--

Good argument, I hope, we will not fly--

And time hath worn us into slovenry:

But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim;

And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night

They'll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck

The gay new coats o'er the French soldiers' heads

And turn them out of service. If they do this,--

As, if God please, they shall,--my ransom then

Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour;

Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald:

They shall have none,

I swear, but these my joints;

Which if they have as I will leave 'em them,

Shall yield them little, tell the constable.

--Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3

Posted by Dave J at November 11, 2006 06:55 PM | TrackBack (0) |