Henry Allingham, WW1 veteran, dies

Off-topic
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Henry Allingham, the oldest man, and one of the last two survivors of World War 1 (1914 - 1918) has just died at the age of 113. There is now only one suriviving WW1 veteran, aged 111.

Henry Allingham celebrated his 113th birthday recently, so by my calculation he was born in 1896. He lived through parts of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, and two world wars.

He would have been about 7 when the Wright brothers made their first powered flight. He died in a world where people complain about uncomfortable seats and poor meals on budget airline flights.

When Allingham was born, the “safety bicycle” (chain drive to rear wheel; two wheels of equal size) was still a fairly new idea (invented 1885) and penny farthings and their variants were still in use. He died in a world in which people ride to the shops on full suspension mountain bikes with 27 gears and hydraulic disc brakes, and where kids complain if their unicycle cranks bend when they’ve dropped ten feet off a wall.

When Allingham was born, most people never went more than a few miles from their own village in their whole lives. He died in a world in which it is possible to have breakfast in London and lunch in Paris or New York on the same day, and we think nothing of driving 100 miles just to meet friends for a day out.

When Allingham was born, most people in Britain lived in grinding poverty. The workers had no political or economic power. (Britain’s Labour party was founded when he was 4, and he was 28 before we had the first labour government.)

The telephone was a luxury when he was born. He was well into his thirties when the television became commercially available. He was in his nineties when the internet became available to the general public.

Allingham fought in the first world war, when soldiers walked side by side across no man’s land into heavy machine gun fire. They couldn’t advance at a run because they were carrying heavy packs of equipment. Fighting was close quarters with bayonets, and soldiers who refused to advance were sometimes shot on the spot by their own officers.

When one man’s life has spanned so much fundamental change, it is sometimes worth pausing to reflect on how much we take for granted today.

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Excellent post Mike. Sad news, but it did make me stop and think how much I take for granted.

3

This really sucks. I find super centarians fascinating, and it’s always sad to hear veterans of the World Wars die.

According to Wikipedia, there are six surviving.

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I should have specified: there is only one remaining British WW1 veteran. (My source is the BBC, not Wikipedia.)

But that wasn’t really the point of my post.

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Imagine, if you will, some distant future post announcing the death of the last veteran of war, period.

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That would be awesome.

But sadly, I think it will never happen, because when there is no more war, there will be no more people.:frowning:

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Henry Allingham fought in “the war to end wars”. QED

“And I can’t help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you “The Cause?”
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.”

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is that true?
my grand mother told me she walked 30km just to go dancing. People in my country (spanish border) will walk up to Belgium to buy embroidered things and sell them back. My grand grand father and grand grand mother married in 1871 and were from villages 200 km apart. they set up an hotel and at the end of the century had clients from all over Europe (I know: a cousin married a visitor from Romania).

another point is that you do not need to be extraordinary old to spot differences: I clearly remember my first flight. I was on a WWII britanny bomber revamped for civilian use. we were seated along the plane body, with blankets around us and the flight from Toulouse in the south of France to Casablanca in Morocco was a day long series of hops across Spain.
after that I traveled with SuperConstellation, then Vicker Viscount turbo-props, then Caravelle jets, Boeings 707, 747 and airbuses … And I am not speaking about computers!

9

In this country, which is an island, unless you had a job that involved travel, or were lucky enough to be enlisted to fight, it was rare for the common working man to travel any significant distance. Indeed, there are still people today who have never travelled more than a few miles from home: mainly older countrypeople and members of the inner city underclass.

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Yes, makes you think.

I heard the news about Henry Allingham on the radio on Saturday whilst in the middle of walking up the 5 highest mountains in the UK and Ireland. At the time I pondered the fact I could travel between 5 countries (by car & ferry) and have time to do all the ascents/descents in 48 hours.

Sad though it is, Mr Allingham’s death did make me reflect that we do want the best of both worlds; the ease, speed and convenience of modern life at the same time as the peace we find on a mountain top.

Not there was much peace to be had on these hills as the whole world appeared to be doing the 3 peaks challenge on them!

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Our pipe band regularly performs at ceremonies of the local MOTH club.
They have a couple of regulars who are WWII vets.
It astounds me how seriously they’ve aged in the year or so that I’ve been involved and have regularly met them.

I cannot even imagine someone who served 25+ years before them.

Because these green hills are not highland hills
Or the island hills, they’re not my land’s hills
And fair as these green foreign hills may be
They are not the hills of home.

Thought some pics would be in order.

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Harry Patch has now died, aged 111. The last British survivor of the trenches. See the following, from the BBC website:

The last British survivor of the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, has died at the age of 111.

Mr Patch was conscripted into the Army aged 18 and fought in the Battle of Passchendaele at Ypres in 1917 in which more than 70,000 British soldiers died.

He was raised in Combe Down, near Bath, and had been living at a care home in Wells, Somerset.

The sole British survivor of the war is former seaman Claude Choules, who is aged 108 and lives in Perth, Australia.

‘Great man’

Mr Choules, who is originally from Worcestershire, saw service with the Royal Navy.

Henry Allingham, who served in the navy and the RAF in WWI, died at the age of 113 a week ago.

The Queen said she was “saddened” to hear of Mr Patch’s death.

Prince Charles spoke of the terrible conditions faced by soldiers during WWI
“We will never forget the bravery and enormous sacrifice of his generation, which will continue to serve as an example to us all.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "I had the honour of meeting Harry, and I share his family’s grief at the passing of a great man.

"I know that the whole nation will unite today to honour the memory, and to take pride in the generation that fought the Great War.

“The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten. We say today with still greater force - ‘We will remember them’.”

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We will remember them.

PS. for the younger among us who may think I am simply mocking Mikefule, please google “Laurence Binyon” and read the 4th stanza of his poem “For The Fallen”.
It is traditionally read at war memorials and the repetition of the final line is a MOTH response.

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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them

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Today was the funeral of Harry Patch, the last British WW1 veteran to have fought in the trenches.

As Mr Patch was described as Europe’s oldest man at the time of his death I’m was wondering if he was the last European survivor of the Great War but then I spotted this article.

It’s humbling to realise that these men not only served in the “war to end all wars” but also lived through WW2.

As has been remarked, we will remember them.