The Last of the Doughboys

The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War

By: Richard Rubin

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

In 2003, eighty-five years after the armistice, it took Richard Rubin months to find just one living American veteran of World War I. But then, he found another. And another. Eventually, he found dozens, aged 101 to 113, and interviewed them. All are gone now.

A decade-long odyssey to recover the story of a forgotten generation and their war led Rubin across the United States and France, through archives, private collections, battlefields, literature, propaganda, and even music. But at the center of it all were the last of the last, the men and women he met: a new immigrant, drafted and sent to France, whose life was saved by a horse; a Connecticut Yankee who volunteered and fought in every major American battle; a Cajun artilleryman nearly killed by a German airplane; an eighteen-year-old Bronx girl "drafted" to work for the War Department; a machine gunner from Montana; a marine wounded at Belleau Wood; the sixteen-year-old who became America’s last World War I veteran; and many more.

They were the final survivors of the millions who made up the American Expeditionary Forces, nineteenth-century men and women living in the twenty-first century. Self-reliant, humble, and stoic, they kept their stories to themselves for a lifetime, then shared them at the last possible moment so that they, and the war they won - the trauma that created our modern world - might at last be remembered. You will never forget them. The Last of the Doughboys is more than simply a war story; it is a moving meditation on character, grace, aging, and memory.

©2013 Richard Rubin (P)2013 Blackstone Audio

Excellent

I really enjoy hearing first hand accounts and wow did this deliver. It was a pleasure to listen too.

Flawed But Worthwhile: History Buffs Should Get It

This book is good most of the time but bad in spots. So are most books I read or listen to—so little offense, Mr. Rubin. If aged WWI veterans don’t say much Rubin mortars history between his blocks of interviews, and the format works pretty well. Or, he inserts interesting observations from personal tours of battlefields in France, in places specific to interviewees. Rubin became friends with the oldsters, going back to visit them every so often, an endearing thing. Grover Gardner narrates the reminiscences well, as always. The book is enjoyable until Rubin quotes lyrics from his WWI sheet music collection. Tin Pan Alley cranked out terrible stuff. Hear a few verses and you won’t want to hear more. And so, if you buy the book, listen to some of the lyrics then skip ahead because it doesn’t get any better until the chapter ends. Rubin writes that he has hundreds of examples in his collection and I guess he wanted to make use of a fair number of them—but yeeeech. Another quick criticism to an otherwise decent book: Being from the East Coast with its philosophical predilections, Rubin defines racism contemporaneously and then condemns it like it happened yesterday, rather than placing it in its particular historical context. For example, he takes a century-old comic novelty song from Vaudeville—“Indianola”—and, with the narrator reading it dead-pan, makes it sound like the KKK wrote it last week. (For an enjoyable couple of minutes listen to the old Billy Murray rendition of “Indianola” on the Internet. It’s fun.) Context? Picture a guy on stage in a loud plaid suit, carrying a cane, “selling” the song on the yokel circuit somewhere in the sticks, in 1918, at eight o’clock in the evening, on a Tuesday, and you have but one historical context for “Indianola.” Ethnic humor was everywhere at the time. That guy on the stage could have been just about any color or extraction, by the way, including Native American if one of them wanted to troop the boards. Using contemporary rules of measure, “K-K-K-Katie” might be condemned as offensive to both stutters and hillbillies. Oops! I mean vocally challenged folk and chronically under-employed rural laborers. I wonder what Rubin would say about Bill Mauldin’s WWII cartoon of an Indian on guard duty stopping a freight train because he was told not to let anything pass? Rubin needed an editor to put his or her foot down in a few spots.
Taken all-in-all, the book is worth the money if you skip the gas-bag parts. Most of it is well-written and interesting. The diversity of centenarian doughboys (and one doughgirl office worker) is unexpected. And God bless these old guys’ hearts—which have all now ceased beating.

Great Story!

This was a really good book! I've read allot about WWII and of course the American Civil War, but never much about "The Great War". The interviews with the surviving veterans and their stories are amazing. I have always enjoyed listening to older folks and hearing what they have to say, where they've been and how it was in their era. This book fits that bill!

Grover Gardner does an excellent job of communicating the manner in which his interviewees spoke, gestured, thought and lived. His inflection and tone were excellent throughout the entire book.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history, anyone interested WWI, or anyone who enjoys hearing about the past as told by those who lived it. I'm glad I made this selection!

This book will fill a gap in your education

All who live today owe it to themselves to read this excellent book. Enjoy this one.

Pay dirt in the trenches

I loved the historicity and thoroughly documented aspects of this book. It’s obvious the author spent a good many years interviewing the subjects of this work, and that says something quite special about everything that appears in these stories.

I found this book valuable in my own research and it gave me a few valuable clues as I continue to connect dots. I’ve been reading letters from various doughboys including my own grandfather’s to his sister. Like many other men, he faked his name and age to get in and ride with General Pershing in pursuit of Poncho Villa. He eventually ended up serving as an artillery man in France during the Great War.

This book adds depth and dimension to my research along with others. I’ve been pretty lucky so far, but that hasn’t come without quite a bit of digging. This book gave me some pay dirt in that pursuit and I am forever grateful.


Bill Graham