The Last of the Doughboys

Published on 26 August 2014
Submitted by Richard Rubin

In 2003, 85 years after the end of World War I, Richard Rubin set out to see if he could still find and talk to someone who had actually served in the American Expeditionary Forces during that colossal conflict.

Ultimately, he found dozens, aged 101 to 113, from Cape Cod to Carson City, who shared with him at the last possible moment their stories of America’s Great War. Nineteenth-century men and women living in the twenty-first century, they were self-reliant, humble, and stoic, never complaining, but still marvelling at the immensity of the war they helped win, and the complexity of the world they helped create.

Though America has largely forgotten their war, you will never forget them, or their stories. 

The Last of the Doughboys
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