Posted: Saturday, November 11, 2000 | 10:12 a.m. E-mail this Story to a friend Illinois veteran, recalls battle that helped end WWI By Harry Levins Post-Dispatch Senior Writer MURPHYSBORO, Ill. - Virgil Marks, age 106, was in the trenches on the day that gave rise to Veterans Day. That was Nov. 11, 1918, the day World War I ended. At 11 a.m. that day - the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - an armistice stopped the shooting, and the war. "I was up front," says Marks. In November 1918, he was an Army infantry private with Company H of the 28th Division's 111th Infantry. Marks' regiment had just wrapped up its role in the Battle of the Argonne Forest. Although the Argonne is little remembered today, it was a 47-day bloodbath that finally broke the back of the German army in northeastern France. When the Americans and their French allies prevailed, the German situation turned hopeless. Germany asked for the armistice talks, thus ending "the war to end all wars." The next year, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Nov. 11 as Armistice Day. By then, Marks was a civilian again, living in the family farmhouse south of Murphysboro, about 100 miles southeast of St. Louis, and working for the Illinois Central Railroad. "He never talked about the war until just a few years ago," says his daughter, Marge Hand, 74. "And then he turned 100, and the reporters started coming to interview him, and they've been coming ever since." And Marks has been talking ever since, about the war and his part in it. His handshake is strong and his mind is clear, but his hearing is almost gone. As a result, Marks' answers don't necessarily line up with the questions that are put to him. In an interview at his kitchen table on Thursday, he spoke loudly and at some length about a shell that landed near his squad at one point, tossing him 20 feet. He remembered a long crawl on his belly under fire to get water. And, with a grin, he remembered sassing his company commander - and getting away with it. One day, it seems, the captain chose Marks for some risky chore. Marks said, "I told him, 'You son of a bitch - are you trying to get me killed?' And he said, 'Marks, you're the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth!' " His daughter shook her head, smiled and said, "I told him he shouldn't talk like that - but he even said it on television." Marks is, in fact, an independent cuss. He won't hear of a nursing home. Instead, he shares his modest cottage with two mutts and a cat that Hand says is "meaner than a snake." Until four years ago, when his son-in-law died, he cooked his own meals. These days, Hand drops by to cook for her father - or to drive him to Murphysboro's McDonald's. "He loves Happy Meals," says Hand. Marks gets around with the aid of a walker. "When you get to be 106," he said, "this is how you walk." Marks likes to show visitors a photo of him standing erect in his uniform, complete with high-necked tunic and khaki puttees. He held on to that uniform until 1942, when a house fire destroyed it. "I've needed that uniform several times since, " he said. "Is there any way you can get me one?" Marks apparently was referring to occasions like a ceremony last year in which somebody from the French consulate in Chicago came to town to pin a medal on him. In 1998, the French government decided to mark the 80th anniversary of the armistice by honoring the surviving Americans who had gone in 1917-18, as Marks put it, "over there to drive those Germans out of France." Each became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Marks got his medal a year ago August, at the American Legion post here. He has no special plans for this Veterans Day, the name that Congress gave the holiday in 1954 to honor all veterans of all wars. Marks was one of eight children and is the last alive. His wife of 60 years died in 1982. Their son, Dewey - a combat infantryman in WWII in Europe - died in 1979. His two stepchildren are dead. And so are almost all of the 4.7 million Americans who were wearing uniforms on that original Armistice Day 82 years ago. As of July 1, says the Department of Veterans Affairs, only about 2,400 WWI veterans remained. The department estimates that 55 live in Missouri and 99 or 100 in Illinois. Among all the veterans in Illinois, Marks is the oldest. His daughter says, "He's pleasant for 106. He's easy to get along with."