Here's William Lundy helmeted up in front of a F-100 Super Saber at Eglin AFB in 1955. He claimed to have served in the Confederate cavalry (Company D 4th Alabama Cavalry Regiment) from March 1864-1865, joining up at the age of 16.
If true, that'd make Lundy a remarkable 107 years old at the time of the photo, but his story's disputed. Census records suggest he was actually born in 1860, which would make the alleged veteran a posing old fraud, albeit with a venerable visage.
Who knows. I'd like to believe the story's true because there it is, a very old man who lived in the horse-drawn age standing next to a jet fighter in the 1950s. How cool is that? Very. And even if Lundy wasn't the veteran he claimed to be, he was still a stand-out from another age. A person who lived across the transformation of America and Western civ into something approaching the way we live now.
You can imagine his dismay, if he were alive to see it, at our devolution into the hideous, banal, ersatz, wicked, dumb-as-you-like-then-some barbarity of the 21st century. As it is, he had his moment with a Super Saber.
So, is the photo and all that's with it real? You be the judge.
4ACR forever,
LSP
