Last WWI Combat Veteran Dies

[W4ASZ]

Another page of history is turned.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/05/claude-choules-last-world-war-one-veteran-dies

Also :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13289607

 

[Shangas]

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/w...rth-digger-claude-choules-20110505-1e9d9.html

More news from Australia.

 

[MikeBravo]

Last WWI Combat Vet Dead

(Newser) – The last known survivor of the tens of millions of people who fought in World War I has died in Australia at the age of 110, reports AP. Claude Choules began training with Britain's Royal Navy when he was just 14 and served on the battleship HMS Revenge, where he witnessed the surrender of Germany's main fleet in 1918. He moved to Australia after the war and served in the navy there during World War II, acting as chief demolition officer for the western side of the continent, which was considered vulnerable to Japanese attack.

Choules met his wife Ethel on the first day of his sea journey to Australia and they stayed together for 76 years until her death in 2003, raising three children and settling down to a quiet life crayfishing south of Perth after he left the military in 1956. "I had a pretty poor start," he told an interviewer in 2009. "But I had a good finish." The only known WWI service member still alive is Florence Green, also 110, who served as a waitress in Britain's Women's Royal Air Force

Newser link

 

[Shangas]

You're a bit slow off the mark. There's already a thread dedicated to this.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

Had to come to and end at some point--we will miss them!

 

[MikeBravo]

You're a bit slow off the mark. There's already a thread dedicated to this.

Yeah I didn't think to look before posting.

The good ol' Bartenders fixed it

 

[Smithy]

The end of an era.

"The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..."

 

[The Good]

R.I.P. Claude Choules. I'm sure that this is a man who must have served his country well, and deserved his honor for it. It is almost difficult to fathom the death of the last World War I veteran, though. They are now gone, unless perhaps, there is somewhere a participant that is not known...

Not too long ago, the last United States veteran passed on too.

 

[mercuryfelt76]

Just imagine the world Mr Choules was born into and how much things have changed within one person's life. It's sad to think we have all but lost contact with that part of our history.

 

[filfoster]

The men may be gone but the ordnance will continue to blow up French farmers far into the new millenium.