Moses Hardy (January 6, 1894 – December 7, 2006) was, at age 112, the last surviving African-American veteran of World War I and one of the last surviving American veterans of the war in general. The son of former slaves, Hardy lived a religious and farming life until he signed up to serve overseas in World War I in July 1918. As an African American during the Jim Crow era, he served in the segregated 805th Pioneer Infantry, which was assigned a variety of manual labor and support tasks. Hardy himself served as a scout, supplying the front line troops when necessary. Though Hardy did experience combat, he was never seriously injured and rarely discussed his experiences concerning the fighting. Instead, he preferred to recount stories about the food, the bravery of the soldiers and the weather in France.
After the war, he took on a variety of jobs including school bus driver, farmer, deacon and cosmetics salesman, the latter of which he performed well past his 100th birthday. He received the Victory Medal, a special medal from the Mississippi National Guard and the French Légion d'honneur. In 1999, the Mississippi Legislature adopted a resolution recognizing him as an outstanding citizen of Mississippi. At the time of his death, aged 112, he was recognized as the oldest combat veteran ever, the oldest male ever recorded in Mississippi and the second-oldest man and World War I veteran in the world.
Early life
Hardy was born in Aberdeen, Mississippi in 1894. Although he claimed to have been born in 1893, census records show he was born in 1894. Hardy's parents, Morris Hardy—born in the 1840s—and Nancy Hardy, were former slaves who after the Civil War had purchased of land in Mississippi from a Chickasaw Native American for a dollar. The Hardy family was a deeply religious one, and Moses would later recount that Exodus 20:12, which instructed one to honor their parents, was his favorite Bible passage and one which he lived by. Hardy was married once, to a woman by the name of Fannie Marshall, with whom he would end up having eight children.
Military career
Hardy's service in France lasted from July 1918 to July 1919, and included thirty-nine combat days. As an African American, he served in a segregated army unit, the 805th Pioneer Infantry, which was commanded by white officers. Although the unit's purpose was to provide support for engineer regiments, it was also an infantry unit that was equipped to fight if necessary. The unit focused mainly of the tasks of stevedores, such as unloading cargo from ships, but also performed other manual labor tasks, such as cooking and organizing burials. Hardy's outfit was armed solely with rifles, instead of standard-issue machine guns. After the war, Hardy's division was responsible for cleaning up the battlefields and removing the dead.
Hardy himself admitted to his family that he was "scared to death"
Hardy often acted as a scout who would help bring supplies to troops on the front line. On September 25, 1918, he was present at the Meuse River during a mustard gas attack and, at some point during the war, he received an injury to his knee. Hardy rarely spoke about the fighting itself, and preferred to talk about France's weather when asked about his experiences overseas. He was interviewed by Treehouse Productions in 2006 as part of their Living History Project, a radio tribute to the last surviving World War I veterans that was hosted by Walter Cronkite. Though he could not speak coherently, his son Haywood Hardy, himself 80 years old at the time, recalled some of the stories that his father had told him.
Hardy did not serve in World War II and instead drove a school bus, farmed and sold liniments and wigs for "Lucky Heart" cosmetics until his retirement. He reportedly continued to go door-to-door for several years past his centenary, even resorting to phone sales when his children hid the keys of his 1972 Chevrolet Caprice. The youngest of his eight children, Jean Dukes, was born in the late 1940s.