WWI soldier, at 110, among last survivors of an era

A cane rested in his lap and a baseball cap cast a shadow over a frown as World War I veteran Antonio Pierro recalled American artillery blasting away in the forest and enemy shells screaming overhead.

``During the war everything was action," said Pierro, 110 years old, who lives in Swampscott with his brother and a nephew. ``You're at the front line, you duck the shells coming your way. It was no fun being out at the front lines, being shot at. You gotta duck."

A US Army private in the 320th Field Artillery Regiment of the 82d Division in France in 1918, Pierro is one of about two dozen still living of the 4.8 million who served in the US military during World War I, and one of a handful of living US veterans who survived the battlefields of the Western Front.

Two other World War I veterans living in New England, Russell Buchanan of Watertown and Samuel Goldberg of Greenville, R.I., both 106 years old, served in the United States during the war. Buchanan also is a veteran of World War II.

``They're the last of a breed, and of an era," said Chris Scheer of the Veterans Affairs Administration in Washington, who tracks US veterans of World War I.

Scheer's list of 18 includes Pierro, Buchanan, and Goldberg.

He said it is impossible to know how many are still alive.

``Last year we were pretty sure we had at least 50, and this year we're guessing that we're down to about 25," said Scheer, who adds that seven receive compensation pension benefits.

In France, Italian-born Pierro survived machine guns, explosions, and gas .

But one memory never fails to brighten the old veteran: that of the beautiful woman he met in Bordeaux, France, after the fighting stopped. ``Ah, Madeline," he said. ``That was my gal."

Pierro fought in the battle of St. Mihiel from Sept. 12-16, 1918, and the US-led Meuse-Argonne Campaign, which began Sept. 26 and helped end the war at great cost. Michael B. Barrett, a history professor at The Citadel, said that Meuse-Argonne accounted for some 117,000 US casualties.

``The terrain allowed no room for maneuvering or flank attacks; the soldiers simply had to grind up the Meuse Valley and Argonne Forest and Ridge," Barrett said.

John Ellis van Courtland Moon, a military historian who taught 11 years at Fitchburg State College before retiring in 1993, said it is ``absolutely amazing, almost unbelievable," that a soldier who fought in that offensive would be alive today.

Pierro survived, narrowly. Among his grim tasks in France, he would take a wagon to the front lines with supplies and return with bodies. On one occasion a shell exploded, killing the horse that was pulling his wagon. Another time, he was resting in the forest when a shell struck a tree nearby and failed to detonate.

Born in Forenza, Italy, Feb. 15, 1896, Pierro sailed from the United States May 18, 1918, and returned May 9, 1919. He immigrated to the United States in 1914, and lived with family in Boston and Swampscott. He married Mary Pierre in 1920; she died in 1967. They had no children. He worked in research and development at the General Electric plant in Lynn. Pierro still has a sense of humor. One day last year, he asked his 97-year-old brother, ``Nick, what are we going to do when we get old?"

``What are we going to do?" Nicholas Pierro recalled replying. ``We're going to keep going."