A Race Against Time to Find WW I's Last American Doughboys

"Ten years ago, writer Richard Rubin set out to talk to every living American veteran of World War I he could find. It wasn't easy, but he tracked down dozens of centenarian vets, ages 101 to 113, collected their stories and put them in a new book called The Last of the Doughboys. He tells NPR's Melissa Block about the veterans he talked to, and the stories they shared."

"In 1998, the government of France had started awarding the Legion of Honor, their highest decoration, to living American veterans who'd served in World War I on French soil. And they undertook an intensive search for such men, and they ended up finding 550 or so men and women, and eventually I found a list of these people; and that was the first big break I got."