ANNA -- Warren V. Hileman said he had "that itching foot" as a young man.
"I had the wanderlust." That wanderlust led him to enlist during World War I
when he was just 17 and found himself sent to Siberia as part of the American
Expeditionary Force.
Hileman, who died Sunday at age 103 at the Illinois Veterans Home in Anna,
was the last remaining World War I veteran residing in any of the state's
veterans homes, and he may have been the only one in the state.
"We're not paying benefits to any other World War I veterans," Januari
Smith, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs, said
Wednesday, "but that doesn't mean there aren't some out there."
I knew a WWI veteran while I lived in Freeport, Illinois in the 1980's. He died about ten years ago and was over 100 then. I didn't know him well (he was my ex in-laws neighbor) but I regret not making the effort to get his impressions of that time.
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