With more than 300,000 veterans and 100,000 active duty military in San Diego, our Veterans Day celebrations are heartfelt and plentiful.

For nine decades we've honored our veterans on Nov. 11, the day the guns fell silent on the bloody battlefields of Europe. World War I, "the war to end all wars," was over and America was forever changed.

Fate and good health have anointed 108-year-old Frank Buckles of Charles Town, W.Va., as the last living American veteran of that war. Buckles and his fellow "doughboys" once stood 4.7 million strong. They were young, eager, invincible and admittedly unprepared for what they would later encounter.

French and British soldiers had already endured three years of horrific trench warfare when the American Expeditionary Force landed on July 3, 1917.

"Every last one of us Yanks believed we'd wrap this thing up in a month or two and head back home before harvest. In other words, we were the typical, cocky Americans no one wants around, until they need help winning a war," Buckles remembers in his letters and public remarks.

Victory came 17 months later at a cost of 116,000 American dead and 205,000 wounded.

Our country responded with gratitude and a day of remembrance.

World War I had brought our nation into global conflicts for the first time and defined Americans as defenders, liberators and promoters of peace and democracy.

Along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., sit monuments honoring the veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

But there is no national World War I monument and that's an inexcusable slight.

The District of Columbia War Memorial, which sits within the Mall's "War Memorial Park" between the World War II and Korean War Memorials, honors only the 499 residents of Washington, D.C., who gave their lives in World War I. Its deteriorating condition and poor upkeep inspired this last living veteran of that war to advocate and raise funds for the re-dedication of that site as a National World War I Memorial.

But that takes an act of Congress. H.R. 482, the Frank Buckles World War I Memorial Act, was introduced in January of this year. It lingers in committee.

In 2017, the United States will commemorate the centennial of our entry into World War I. Frank Buckles will not be present to see if his dream became a reality.

"As the last veteran of World War I, I feel a deep sense of responsibility to give proper recognition to all of the millions who fought in that war and are now gone. I intend to give all my efforts in the time I have left to see that a national memorial to World War I joins the other war memorials on the National Mall," says Buckles.

By asking our congress members to support a National World War I Memorial in Washington and by contributing to the National World War I Memorial Foundation, we can at long last honor all the veterans of the war that established America's standing in the world.

Gail Chatfield writes from San Diego and can be reached at my500words@yahoo.com