Recently Google announced it had digitized and uploaded images from the LIFE magazine photo archive, many of which have never been published before.  At present Google says only 20 percent of LIFE's archive is online, but the end goal is to have 10 million images available. To do your own searches visit here.

The BBC's Timewatch program provides a fascinating history lesson on the last moments of WWI, where new research has pinpointed who the last soldiers to die in combat were -- even though the armistice had already been signed by the higher-ups.  The document was signed around 5 a.m. on the morning of November 11, 1918, but didn't go into effect until 11 a.m..  In fact, the BBC tells us that on the graves of French soldiers killed after the war's end, earlier dates were inscribed out of embarrassment for their avoidable deaths.  And then there's these facts about the last day's casualties:

The respected American author Joseph E Persico has calculated a shocking figure that the final day of WWI would produce nearly 11,000 casualties, more than those killed, wounded or missing on D-Day, when Allied forces landed en masse on the shores of occupied France almost 27 years later.

The timing of deaths among WWI's final survivors continues to be remarkable as today the Associated Press reports only one WWI veteran is now alive in the United States.  This comes after the death of Harry Richard Landis, 108, who passed away Monday in a Florida nursing home.  Over the past few weeks this blog has covered the deaths of French and German WWI veterans, as well as the last American commander who fought with volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.  Our ties to that era are disappearing at an alarming rate.  Frank Buckles, 107, is now the final remaining American vet of the WWI era.

As the AP reports, Landis never served overseas but enlisted during wartime in 1918, training as a recruit for 60 days before the armistice came.  Here he recalls his unit's final march as the war ended:

“We went down through the girls college, marching down the street. We got down to the courthouse square and there was a wall around this courthouse. We got to the wall and [the drill instructor] didn’t know what to do and we were hup, two, three, four, hup, two, three, four,” Landis said, laughing at the memory. “Finally, we jumped up on the wall and kept going until we got to the courthouse — hup, two, three, four — and he said dismissed.”

The VA tried to reach out and find other survivors last year, said Jim Benson, VA spokesman. There were a few leads, but nothing panned out.

"I think it's amazing for us to realize that you have this population of individuals who served during the first great war, and at that time, it was the war to end all wars," Benson said. "Soon, we will no longer have a living contact. It will all be from the histories left behind."

Last week Soldier's Home took a look at the passing of Louis de Cazenave, one of France's two remaining WWI veterans.  Since then we've heard news of two more veterans dying as the final representatives from a fading era.

Erich Kaestner, said to be Germany's last surviving WWI veteran, is making headlines not so much for his death but for the amount of time it took to realize his significance. He died on January 1 at the age of 107, but it was not until recently that word got out he was Germany's last living link to the Great War.  As the BBC reports:

Reports in Die Welt daily and Der Spiegel magazine identified Kaestner as Germany's last World War I veteran, but verification of the claim was difficult as the country keeps no record of its war veterans.

In a country where the shame of the Nazi genocide and memories of two world war defeats still cast long shadows, both publications focused more on the German national psyche than the death itself.

"The German public was within a hair's breadth of never learning of the end of an era," wrote Der Spiegel, until someone updated his death notice on the internet encyclopaedia site, Wikipedia.

In its obituary for Kaestner, Die Welt noted: "The losers hide themselves in a state of self-pity and self denial that they happily try to mitigate by forgetting." 

"Any form of commemoration of military events is seen as problematic here," Chiari told Spiegel Online.

"Our veterans only take part in public ceremonies when they are invited abroad to join commemorative events with veterans from other countries. World War I is seen as part of a historical line that led to World War II. You can't equate the two but there is much debate about it."

Combat Stress is alarmed at the huge increase in veterans from the Falklands, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, who come knocking on their door for help. A few are still turning up suffering long-term effects from the second world war and Korea. The oldest applicant for help recently was aged 100.

The problems of veterans today are compounded by the widespread recognition through much of the army that the Iraq campaign is unpopular, nasty, unpredictable and brutal—and, in the views of a significant minority of soldiers and officers in private conversation, a pretty unnecessary conflict at that. In the first and second world wars, the plight of service personnel was shared by almost everyone in the land. More than 1 million soldiers served in Northern Ireland over 30 or so years, so that became part of the national experience.

But combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a national experience, and the services are worried that they appear in the minds of many now to be detached from most of British national life. Though more American soldiers have been involved—more than 3,000 killed and nearly 50,000 injured, physically or mentally—Iraq is not a shared experience nationally for Americans in the way that Vietnam was.

A well-trained fighting machine reduced to nothing more than an empty shell.  Combat stress is their calvary, the infantry to fight off their demons.  They were protecting you, now they need your help.

I have received your letter. I have also received two parcels of woollen goods from Mrs. Higgins but you can’t carry a lot of stuff about we have enough to carry about...Your biscuits was grand and I enjoyed them. I have also had a nice parcel from Kate she said she enjoyed the Christmas alright at home...It is still very cold out here at night and we have had some snow. it is different to being out in France, very quiet.

A young English soldier wrote [his thoughts] down on scraps of paper, gun fire ringing out all around.  He could not have known that nearly a century later thousands of computer users would be hanging on his every word.

We're in the position of his family.  We're waiting for the next letter or maybe a telegram from the war office saying he's been killed.  That's really the whole point of the blog.  We're as close as we can be to his family waiting for more news.

Three days after, we were called up the line again of course I went this time. We had to go to the front line were it was on the Menin Road no doubt you have heard about it. We were there for three days it was awful the shelling day and night. We relieved the KOYLI about 10 o’clock and what do you think Fritz came over about 5 o’clock next morning we had an exciting time for about one hour and a half I can tell you. but we beat him off he never got in our trenches he was about two hundred strong it was a picked storming party so the prisoners say that captured, they brought liquid fire with them and bombs and all sorts but not many got back we had twenty casuals and the captain got killed a jolly good fellow too. I was pleased to get out of it but did not feel nervous when I saw them coming over. No 1 in our section was on the gun and we used our rifles. Our Coy as to go before the general for the good work we have done. We have just been given a long trousers again as we have had had Short ones all summer.