Unspeakable Regret

It’s ironic to note the first and last American military members who served in World War One to die were a nurse and an ambulance driver. Mr. Frank Buckles was America’s last surviving World War I soldier. He had been an ambulance driver and died of natural causes many years after the war. The first American military member of WWI to be killed in the line of duty strikes close to home. She was a young 29-year-old United States Army Nurse named Helen Wood - my grandmother’s sister, who died at the same time and in the same incident as another nurse. Although 94 years separate their deaths, the first and the last American WWI veterans are now together in the same place. Sonny Moran is also author of the publications Captains of Concrete and Floating Tombstone: The Mysterious Disappearance of North America’s First Concrete Ship.