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WWI Veteran Didn't See Action, Just 107 Years

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By LISA PEARSON, Tribune correspondent

Published: July 4, 2007

SUN CITY CENTER - It's been almost 90 years since Harry Landis was honorably discharged from the Army.

It was 1918.

He was 18 when he entered the military. He was 19 when he left the service a couple months later.

He is 107 now and a resident of Sun Towers in Sun City Center.

According to the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs in Tallahassee, Landis is one of three U.S. World War I veterans known to be alive.

Landis calls it 'a happenstance.'

Of his brief military duty, there are two things that stand out in his mind as significant: He never saw action, and he never received his first paycheck - for $15.

Landis joined a program called the Student Army Training Corps in October 1918 while attending Central College in Fayette, Mo.

The program was designed to use colleges and universities as training facilities for new military personnel. Instructors were to be hired under a temporary contract with the universities and colleges, which were to be reimbursed for providing facilities and staff.

'I never actually left my college,' Landis said.

In fact, he said, he didn't do much of anything.

'Every day I would wake up and look at my name, and there would be a black mark next to it. Then they would send me with a mop and a bucket to clean the hospital floors. I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. I kept asking my superiors what I had done, and one guy told me, 'Oh, Harry, you must have done something.''

Like clockwork, Landis would wake up and be sent with his mop and bucket to clean the hospital. Every day. For 60 days.

'That was my experience in the military. Seriously. It wasn't much more than that,' Landis said.

He had joined the SATC program because young men were told they probably were going to be drafted.

The armistice was signed Nov. 11, 1918, and Landis was discharged honorably the next month. He had spent about 60 days in the military; 60 days mopping the hospital floors.

Landis reflects on his military days as a small chapter in his life. He harbors one small gripe.

'I never did get my first paycheck,' he said.

He was making a dollar a day. His paychecks were $15. He said a commanding officer took his money.

As he tells it, the officer said they were going to have a big party and it was going to cost a couple of hundred dollars.

'He took our money from us,' Landis said. 'He didn't use all of it on the party. He pocketed about $200 and only spent $100 on the party.'

A Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman in Tallahassee said it would be difficult to find records of Landis' pay stubs or any verification of the missing money.

'I have never had anyone ask me for a paycheck from 90 years ago,' spokesman Steve Murray said. 'I don't doubt there is some record of his pay.'

Until about a year ago, Landis was riding with neighbors to the grocery store and going on other outings. The only medicines he takes are a daily multivitamin and eyedrops for glaucoma.

He doesn't go out much anymore so he can care for his ailing wife, Eleanor, who turns 100 this summer.

He said he enjoys spending quiet time at home.

Sun Towers resident Vi Gura, 95, described Landis as 'super sharp and very well-liked.'

'If you didn't know it, you would never guess he was 107 years old,' Gura said.

Lisa Pearson is a reporter for the Sun in Sun City, a Media General publication. She can be reached at lpearson@

mediageneral.com.

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