The GAR is the "Grand Army of the Republic," which is to say the veterans of the Union side during the Civil War. It was a title never really used during the war, but came into vogue afterwards--first used, I seem to remember, to describe the troops from all the different Union forces marching together at the great victory parade in Washington after the war ended.
Hecht was born in the 1920s, and he is stretching things a bit to say he remembers from his childhood a significant number of Civil War veterans to be "thinned out." This was rather his parents' experience. By the time he would have been aware, the GAR was already down to the "odd handful." It would, in fact, surprise me if Hecht ever actually met a Civil War vet.
Not that this injures the poem.
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