"Last Man Standing" Honors the Whiskey Pact-- Part 2:

Fred Spencer poured a shot of Crown Royal into a bucket of sand in honor of his deceased comrades.  As the name of each was read off, he pored another shot into the bucket.

Mr. Spencer was just 16 when he enlisted in the Army.  Her needed the permission of his parents to join the National Guard.  Just two years later he was under Japanese fire in New Guinea.  He was hit by a Japanese sniper with a shot that went through his right lung and exited his shoulder blade.

He survived but fifteen members of his unit didn't.  However, he spent a year in the hospital.

When Wheeler Bowman, 97, died in April, Mr. Spencer became "The Last Man Standing."

There is still a Company C in the 126th Infantry Regiment.

--GreGen

"Last Man Standing" Honors Whiskey Pact-- Part 1

From the July 3, 2018, CBS  "Last survivor of World War II unit finishes its whiskey pact."

Fred Spencer, 93, was honored July 1 in Kalamazoo as "The Last Man Standing" from a group that hailed from Kalamazoo during the war when he was presented with a bottle of whiskey.

The 126th Infantry Regiment was largely composed of men from Southwest Michigan.  And the members of Mr. Spencer's Company C were made up of 94 men from Kalamazoo County.

All of them were under the age of 20 when they left Kalamazoo for training in 1940.

They made the whiskey promise nearly 80 years ago and it was carried out on Sunday.

--GreGen