ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- They are dying at a rate of 20 a day, the last American voices of the First World War.
But as they fade away, the surviving U.S. veterans of "the war to end all wars" are fighting a lonely battle to save the national organization that for generations has bound them together.
Of the 4.7 million Americans who served in World War I, fewer than 25,000 have endured the march of time and will today mark Veterans Day, which was established in part to remember the end of that conflict in 1918 on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
Their average age is 98, and their organization, the Veterans of World War I of the USA Inc., is wobbling toward extinction, its longtime headquarters relinquished, its 22-person full-time staff reduced to a single volunteer, and its 75-year-old newspaper in danger of folding.
"We only have one place to go, and that's out," said retired Army Sgt. Ray H. Fuller, 98, the group's national commander. "But we're doing all we can to hold on."
They were the heroes of their time, the "doughboys" who stormed Europe in 1917 to save the world from German aggression. More than 110,000 Americans died in the war. And for years afterward, the survivors led the nation's parades, aided the veterans who preceded them and advised the ones who followed.
But times have long since changed, said Mr. Fuller, who was shot in an arm in France in 1918. The war to end all wars did not, and the sacrifices of Mr. Fuller's generation have largely been forgotten amid the horrors of subsequent conflicts.
"It's hard not to feel like we're being ignored sometimes," Mr. Fuller said by telephone from his home in Oshkosh, Wis. "We've had to struggle for just about everything we've gotten."
Veterans of World War I received no home loans, education benefits, insurance or military pensions, but they are eligible for Veterans Administration medical care. They were discharged with $60 and a one-way ticket home.
