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WWI vet never made it over there That doesn't mean John Frazee, 100, didn't try By PAUL FATTIG CENTRAL POINT -- Even after 80 years, John Frazee still shakes his head that World War I ended before he was shipped overseas. "I was sure disappointed," said Frazee, 100, who joined the Army a few months before the armistice was declared eight decades ago today. "A good number of my buddies were already over there," he said of the bloody battlefields in France. "Our friendships weren't necessarily broken, but they were sure threatened." Indeed, many friendships ended when more than 116,000 American servicemen died between April 6, 1917, and Nov. 11, 1918. Of those who died during Uncle Sam's nearly 19-month involvement in the war, roughly half perished from illness. Frazee may be the last veteran of the WWI era still living in Jackson County. There are none registered at the county veterans service office, according to Kathy Tacchini, the veterans service officer. Nor are there any WWI veterans in the Department of Veterans Affairs Domiciliary in White City. The oldest veteran in the Domiciliary is Fred Cox, a World War II veteran born in 1909, a spokeswoman said. Nationally, there are an estimated 3,200 Americans still living who wore military uniforms during WWI, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Frazee, born Oct. 9, 1898 in Boston, has been a United Congregational Church minister and a volunteer chaplain for 70 years. During World War II, he entered the Navy where he served as a chaplain. After retiring to the Rogue Valley from what is now the Department of Veterans Affairs, he volunteered at the Medford Gospel Mission for 21 years and at the Domiciliary. The sign on the door to his room in a comfortable residential home in Central Point reads "Chaplain Frazee." But in WWI, it was just Private Frazee, a trainee preparing to join the American Expeditionary Forces. "I'll tell you the truth -- I wasn't a combatant," stressed Frazee, who is hard of hearing but still speaks strongly. "I was a student in the Army Training Corps." Yet he was a typical doughboy, dressed in olive drab and carrying a 30-06 rifle who joined up in Boston. The pay was about $17.50 a month. "I thought it was the thing to do," he said. "The training business was suggested by the Army people. I was called to do it, so I did it." While he has forgotten much over the years, he says he never forgot the music of the period. As evidence, he began singing, "Over There," a popular WWI song. "They won't be coming back until it's over over there," he sang in a husky, albeit gravelly voice, then added, "Some good music came out of that war." While his buddies from Boston fell from mustard gas poisoning and were mowed down by machine guns, one of the newest weapons of war, Pvt. Frazee continued to train. But that all changed when the world rejoiced on Nov. 11, 1918, the day the armistice was signed. "Oh, my yes, everybody went wild," he recalled of celebrations in Boston. "I was in the heart of the city. There were lots of people on every corner. "I remember a lot of lawlessness," he added. "They broke windows. There was a lot of noise. But that was the thing to do." Frazee, who spent much of his career working with veterans, says he still thinks about that distant war. "It was supposed to be the war to end all wars," he said. "It's sad that it wasn't." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA