Albert Tanner, 105, 4th-Oldest Veteran of U.S. Army, Dies
Funeral services are scheduled today for Albert Tanner, the nation’s fourth-oldest veteran, who died at the age of 105.
Tanner, who had been under nursing care since 1977 at the Washington Soldiers’ Home in Orting, died Friday at a Tacoma hospital.
The Veterans Administration said Tanner was one of the last 15 survivors of the Spanish-American War. He served in the Army from 1898 to 1902 and fought in the Philippine insurrection.
During World War I, he was a first lieutenant in charge of a field artillery unit attached to the French Army, according to the VA. He served in that war from February, 1918, to April, 1919.
Tanner was an accountant, a logger and then a U.S. Forest Service ranger in Montana.
With Tanner’s death there remain only 14 of the 392,000 Americans who participated in the Spanish-American War.
The nation’s oldest living veteran is Walter Pleate, 108, of the Veterans Administration Medical Center at Lebanon, Pa.
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