The last combat veteran of WWI dies

Claude Choules,110, has died has died at a nursing home in Perth, Western Australia. He was the last known
combat veteran of WWI

Choules was born on 3 March, 1901, in Pershore, Worcestershire, He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 14 . In 1917, he joined the battleship HMS Revenge, from which he watched the 1918 surrender of the German high seas fleet, the main battle fleet of the German navy during the war. He also witnessed the scuttling of the fleet at Scapa Flow the following year.

He remained in the Royal Navy after the end of WWI. In 1926, he went to Australia on loan as an instructor at Flinders Naval Depot. He subseequently transferred permanently to the Royal Australian Navy. During WWII Choules was the Acting Torpedo Officer of HMAS Fremantle. He was also the Chief Demolition Officer on the western side of the Australian continent. He was tasked with sabotaging Fremantle harbours and related oil storage tanks in the event of a Japanese invasion. Choules was also responsible for dealing with the first German mine to wash up on Australian soil during the war.

He remained in the RAN after WWII transferring to the Naval Dockyard Police (NDP) to allow him to remain in service until he was 55.

Coules was married to his wife Ethel for 80 years, until her death aged 98. He had 3 children, 11 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren.

With his passing the only WWI veteran remaining is Florence Green who served as a waitress at an RAF station in 1918. It cannot be long until she will have passed too. I understand that there are a few people who claim to have served in WWI but whose record is unverified. It may. Just, just be possible that there are one or two more veterans out there. If there are I will be posting here.

In the meantime rest in peace Mr Choules. The world is poorer for your passing.

The last Canadian WWI veteran dies.

John Babcock, the last Canadian veteran of WWI, has died aged 109.

Born on July 23, 1900 he enlisted in the Canadian Army at the age of 15. The medical examiner recorded his "apparent age" as 18, which meant he was allowed to train.
Despite being under the legal age to fight, which was 19, he persisted in his attempts to get to the front line. He lied about his age again, and sailed to Britain with the Royal Canadian Regiment. There, conscripts under the legal age of 19 formed the Young Soldiers' Battalion to train until they were eligible to fight. But he never saw action as the armistice was signed six months before he reached his 19th birthday.

He moved to the US in the 1920s, serving in the United States Army between 1921 and 1924 He tried to enlist in the US military again in 1941 but failed when it was discovered he had never become a US citizen.

He died in Spokane, Washington, where he had lived since 1932.

And now there are three...

Harry Patch RIP

Portrait of Harry Patch by Peter Kuhfield

Last week saw the passing of Henry Allingham. This week it is with great sorrow to note the passing of Harry Patch, the last Tommy, the known WWI living in Britain and the last veteran of any nation to fight in the trenches on the Western Front. He was 111.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown led the tributes to Patch saying: "I had the honour of meeting Harry, and I share his family's grief at the passing of a great man." The prime minister said the sacrifices of Patch's generation would never be forgotten. "We say today with still greater force: 'We will remember them'."

Prince Charles, who is also the Duke of Cornwall, paid tribute to Patch's service during the war. "Harry was involved in numerous bouts of heavy fighting on the frontline but amazingly remained unscathed for a while. Tragically one night in September 1917 when in the morass in the Ypres Salient a German shrapnel shell burst overhead badly wounding Harry and killing three of his closest friends. .In spite of the comparatively short time that he served with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, Harry always cherished the extraordinary camaraderie that the appalling conditions engendered in the battalion and remained loyal to the end."

A close friend Jim Ross said "Harry died peacefully, surrounded by his many friends," he said. "While the country may remember Harry as a soldier, we will remember him as a dear friend. He was a man of peace who used his great age and fame as the last survivor of the trenches to communicate two simple messages: remember with gratitude and respect those who served on all sides; settle disputes by discussion, not war."

Patch was a machine-gunner in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. He served in the trenches as a private from June to September 1917. fought in the battle of Passchendaele in 1917 in which more than 70,000 British troops died.
Fletcher House nursing home in Wells, Somerset, where Patch died, said his funeral was being arranged in accordance with his wishes.

There are now just three WWI veterans alive around the world (See post above)

RIP Harry

Henry Allingham now the oldest man in the world

Following the death of death of Tomoji Tanabe in Japan WWI veteran Henry Allingham (113) has officially been proclaimed the oldest man alive by Guinness World Records.

Henry is the last survivor of the battle of Jutland, the last survivor of the creation of the Royal Air Force. May his tenure as world's oldest living man be a long one

Last of the diggers

John Campbell “Jack” Ross, Australia's last remaining World War I veteran, has died, aged 110. At the time of his death he was also Australia’s oldest man. According to his obituary in The Age he died peacefully in his sleep at the Golden Oaks Nursing Home in the central Victorian city of Bendigoon 3 June.

Mr Ross enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in January, 1918 and trained at the wireless training school before he was posted to the 1st Battalion at Broadmeadows camp in Victoria. However, the war ended before he could be posted overseas.

He was awarded the 80th Anniversary Armistice Remembrance medal in 1998 to commemorate the end of WWI. He also received the Centenary Medal for his contribution to Australian society in the 100 years since federation.

According to the BBC Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Kevin Rudd paid tribute to Mr Ross, saying Australia "owes so much to this brave war generation...Today [Wednesday] we mourn the death of Jack Ross...I ask that we also reflect on the service and sacrifice of the 417,000 Australians who served our nation during World War I and the 61,000 who gave their lives,".

There are now just five WWI veterans alive:

Henry Allingham, Harry Patch, Claude Choules (British although Choules, the only veteran also to serve in WWII, lives in Australia)

John Babcock (Canadian but resident in the USA)

Frank Buckles (American)

A Black Tommy at the Somme

Saturday’s Independent carried a photograph (above) featuring three artillerymen. It is a very rare example of an image of a black British soldier from WWI.

The photograph is one of almost 400 snaps of British soldiers on the eve of, and during, the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The photographs, all of which are preserved on glass plates, lay undisturbed in the attic of a ramshackle barn 10 miles behind the Somme battlefields for more than 90 years. When the barn changed hands in 2007, they were thrown on to the street. Passers-by collected a few and eventually the historical value of the plates, some in perfect condition, some badly damaged, was realised.

Recently the photographs have been assembled and their images printed, scanned and digitally restored by two local men, Bernard Gardin and Dominique Zanardi. M. Gardin, 60, is a photography enthusiast, while M. Zanardi, 49, owns the "Tommy" cafe, which sits in the heart of the Somme battlefield in the village of Pozières.

An amateur photographer, possibly a local farmer, is believed to have taken the photographs in the winter of 1915-16 and the spring and summer of 1916. The unknown photographer presumably made a crust by charging British soldiers a few francs to take a snap which they could send home to their loved ones. The collection forms a record of the British army on the eve of and during the Battle of the Somme The identity of the soldiers is, and may always remain, a mystery.

The image of the black Tommy in possibly the most historically significant. There was a small black community (about 20,000 strong) in Britain during WWI, mostly living at sea ports. Black Britons are known to have volunteered and fought on the Western Front but photographs of them are extremely rare.

The British First World War historian, Michael Stedman, has identified the three soldiers in the photograph as members of the Royal Regiment of Artillery or Royal Garrison Artillery. "Look at the chalk dust on their boots and general cleanliness of their kit," he explains. "Chalk dust only arose in the summer campaigning on the 1916 Somme battlefield as the terrain dried out. My bet is that this photo was taken in the summer of 1916 (probably August/September). The men look worn, gaunt, frayed and very fit and lean, from relatively little food and an open air existence. I suspect they have been in action for some time ... They are clearly friends – hands on shoulders and all that."

There were West Indian and Gold Coast (Ghanaian) units in the fighting on the Western Front but the story of black British soldiers scattered in otherwise white front line units has been sparsely recorded. Relations between white and black soldiers were reported to have been good although there was a riot – fomented by white South Africans – between white and black soldiers recovering from their wounds at a hospital in Liverpool in 1918.

In this image, though, there is none of that potential for animosity visible: only the natural brotherhood of three men thrown together by a brutal war, and relying on each other to survive.


Those with a knowledge of the history of black Britons will know that Walter Tull (above) who became the first black person to be commissioned in the British Army. He died in action in 1918. Interestingly his brother Edward is believed to be Britain’s first black dentist

Netherwood Hughes RIP

Netherwood (Ned) Hughes who died on 4 April aged 108, was one of the last surviving veterans of WWI. Born in Great Harwood Lancashire, Hughes spent most of his working life as a mechanic and driver and, in June 1918, he was called up, like every other driver in Great Britain, to perform that role in the British Army. He was still in training when the war ended.

There are now just six known WWI veterans alive.

Henry Allingham becomes oldest ever British man

According to the BBC , Henry Allingham, one of the last seven known surviving WWI veterans, has become the oldest ever British man. At 112 years and 296 days (and counting) he has lived longer than Welshman John Evans, who died in 1990 aged 112 years and 295 days.

Mr Allingham spent the day quietly at St Dunstan's care home for blind ex-service personnel near Brighton. Dennis Goodwin, his close friend and founder of the First World War Veterans' Association, said: "He has achieved another milestone in his long life and is raising the bar of longevity. "To be honest the last two years have been littered with milestones but this one is nice for him.

Mr Allingham, is the last founder member of the RAF and the sole survivor of the Battle of Jutland. He is the second oldest living man in the world, and the 15th oldest ever,

Did Mengele continue his perverted work in Brazil?

The Angel of Death

If someone ever deserved the sobriquet "Angel of Death" it was Joseph Mengele. As a doctor at Birkenau from 1943 until his flight in the face of the Red Army in January 1945, he conducted appalling experiments (although what the evil bastard did could hardly be called scientific), mainly on twins but also on others including the dwarf Ovitz family. He once attempted to create conjoined twins from two Roma children. Essentially he represented a clinically callous evil. Click here for more details of his ghastly deeds.

Mengele's subjects rarely if ever had the benefit of anaesthetic

After the war Mengele escaped capture and justice (although death would have been far too good for him) or possibly the fate meted out to amoral scum like Werner von Braun or the utterly evil Japanese Unit 731 - to be taken in to the service of the USA or the other allies, He lived the rest of his life in South America dying from a stroke while out swimming in 1979. It is believed that the sharks refused to touch his body.

According to an article in the Telegraph last week a historian claims believes that Mengele's ghastly experiments may have borne fruit: for years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed.

The twins of Candido Godoi

But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town.

In a new book, Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America, the Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa, a specialist in the post-war Nazi flight to South America, has painstakingly pieced together the Nazi doctor's mysterious later years. After speaking to the townspeople of Candido Godoi, he is convinced that Mengele continued his genetic experiments with twins. After working with cattle farmers in Argentina to increase their stock, Mengele fled the country after fellow Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, was kidnapped by Israeli agents. He allegedly found refuge in the German enclave of Colonias Unidas, Paraguay, and from there, in 1963, began to make regular trips to another predominantly German community just over the border in Brazil – the farming community of Candido Godoi. And, Mr Camaras claims, it was here that soon after the birthrate of twins began to spiral.

"I think Candido Godoi may have been Mengele's laboratory, where he finally managed to fulfil his dreams of creating a master race of blond haired, blue eyed Aryans," he said. "There is testimony that he attended women, followed their pregnancies, treated them with new types of drugs and preparations, that he talked of artificial insemination in human beings, and that he continued working with animals, proclaiming that he was capable of getting cows to produce male twins."

Some of Mengele's victims

The urbane German who arrived in Candido Godoi was remembered with fondness by many of the townspeople. “He told us he was a vet," said Aloisi Finkler, a local farmer. "He asked about illnesses we had among our animals, and told us not to worry, he could cure them. He appeared a cultured and dignified man." Another farmer, Leonardo Boufler, said: "He went from farm to farm checking the animals. He checked them for TB, and injected those that were infected. He said he could carry out artificial insemination of cows and humans, which we thought impossible as in those days it was unheard of."

A former mayor and town doctor, Anencia Flores da Silva, set out to try to solve the town's mystery. He interviewed hundreds of people, and discovered one character who crept on cropping up: an itinerant medic calling himself Rudolph Weiss. Dr da Silva said: "In the testimonies we collected we came across women who were treated by him, he appeared to be some sort of rural medic who went from house to house. He attended women who had varicose veins and gave them a potion which he carried in a bottle, or tablets which he brought with him. Sometimes he carried out dental work, and everyone remembers he used to take blood."
The people of Candido Godoi now largely accept that a Nazi war criminal was an inadvertent guest of theirs for several years in the early 1960s. The town's official crest shows two identical profiles and a road sign welcomes visitors to a "Farming Community and Land of the Twins". There is also a museum, the House of the Twins.

"Nobody knows for sure exactly what date Mengele arrived in Candido Godoi, but the first twins were born in 1963, the year in which we first hear reports of his presence," he said.



Again I have no idea whether this is all a load of nonsense but it is intriguing. It is the greatest tragedy that Mengele did not answer for his crimes. Having said that when I think of his sort I really hope there is a hellish afterlife, despite being a very lazy atheist. I am sure eternity would be painful for him....

Eva Kor, a victim of Mengele's experiments who has found it in her heart to forgive. More on her in a later post.

Bill Stone dies

Bill Stone, one of the last veterans of WWI, died on 10 January at the age of 108. Stone joined the Royal Navy on 23 September 1918. He was still in training at the time of the Armistice but while serving on HMS Tiger he witnessed the scuttling of the German Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919.

Stone also served in WWII. He participated in the evacuation of Dunkirk which he described as: ” the worst experience of my life ... I saw hundreds of people killed in front of me. Some had no clothes on and were shot and bombed as they swam out to boats. There were oil tanks burning, ships sinking and hundreds of soldiers lined up on the beaches” He also served on the Arctic convoys and participated in allied the invasion of Sicily. He left the Royal Navy in 1945 and set up a barber’s shop.

Stone made his last public appearance on 11 November 2008 (the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI) when together with fellow veterans Henry Allingham and Harry Patch he laid a commemorative wreath for the Act of Remembrance at The Cenotaph.

His daughter described him as a "very determined character “ and “a man of great faith”

There are now just seven WWI veterans alive

Mikhail Krichevsky dies

JTA reported on 5 January that. Mikhail Krichevsky had died at the end of December.

Krichevsky, who was the Ukraine's oldest known man, died in Donetzk two months shy of his 112th birthday. He is almost certainly the last Ukranian veteran of WWI. He may have served on the Austro-Hungarian Front.

Members of the Donetzk Jewish community attributed his longevity to his kindness, and mental and physical toughness.

The last eight veterans of WWI

This time last year there were 23 known World War I veterans alive. Today there are just eight still alive. 2007 saw the deaths of all three central powers veterans, the last French, the last Italian and the last Jamaican veterans (click here for a full list).

The Wikipedians tracking the last veterans of WWI count anyone who was in uniform at the time of the armistice. This means that it records those who may not be considered a veteran by their country. However it does provide a consistent baseline.

Australian

John Campbell Ross. Ross enlisted in February 1918 and served as a wireless operator. However, he never left Australia or saw active service so he is not recognised as a veteran by the Australian government

Canadian

John Babcock Babcock attempted to enlist in 1915 (aged 15). He was placed in a Young Soldiers Battalion in August 1917 and was then transferred to the UK where he continued training until the end of the war. He therefore never saw active service. He has lived in the US since the 1920s.Tthe Canadian government has authorised a state funeral for him should he accept it.

American

Frank Buckles Buckles enlisted in the US army at the age of 16 and saw service in France as an ambulance driver. He has been approved for burial in Arlington Cemetery. Buckles survived Japanese internment in WWII

British

Henry Allingham . Allingham is the last survivor of the Royal Naval Air Service and of Jutland, the last surviving founder member of the Royal Air Force and the oldest ever surviving member of the British Armed Forces

Harry Patch Harry Patch is the last fighting Tommy and the last survivor of the Western Front. He served in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry seeing active service at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917.

Claude Choules Now living in Australia, Choules enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1916 and served on the Battleship HMS Revenge. He witnessed the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919. Choules also saw service in WWII in the Royal Australian Navy.

Bill Stone Stone enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1918 but was still in training when the war ended. He also served in WWII.

Netherwood Hughes A driver, Hughes was called up in 1918 but was still in training when the war ended.

In addition there are two others who may have served in WWI but their service is unverified:

• Ukrainian Mikhail Krichevsky claims to have been called up in 1917 seeing active service on the Austro-Hungarian front;

• Briton Doug Terrey claims to have joined up in 1917 serving as a dispatch rider.