Last WW1 Veteran Dies

[Mark Karlfeldt]

SYDNEY - Claude Stanley Choules, the last known combat veteran of World War I, died Thursday at a nursing home in the Western Australia city of Perth, his family said. He was 110.

"We all loved him," his 84-year-old daughter Daphne Edinger told The Associated Press. "It's going to be sad to think of him not being here any longer, but that's the way things go."

Beloved for his wry sense of humor and humble nature, the British-born Choules — nicknamed "Chuckles" by his comrades in the Australian Navy — never liked to fuss over his achievements, which included a 41-year military career and the publication of his first book at the age of 108.

He usually told the curious that the secret to a long life was simply to "keep breathing." Sometimes, he chalked up his longevity to cod liver oil. But his children say in his heart, he believed it was the love of his family that kept him going for so many years.

"His family was the most important thing in his life," his other daughter, Anne Pow, told the AP in a March 2010 interview. "It was a good way to grow up, you know. Very reassuring."

Choules was born March 3, 1901, in the small British town of Pershore, Worcestershire, one of seven children. As a child, he was told his mother had died — a lie meant to cover a more painful truth: she left when he was 5 to pursue an acting career. The abandonment affected him profoundly, Pow said, and he grew up determined to create a happy home for his own children.

In his autobiography, "The Last of the Last," he remembered the day the first motor car drove through town, an event that brought all the villagers outside to watch. He remembered when a packet of cigarettes cost a penny. He remembered learning to surf off the coast of South Africa, and how strange he found it that black locals were forced to use a separate beach from whites.

He was drawn to the water at an early age, fishing and swimming at the local brook. Later in life, he would regularly swim in the warm waters off the Western Australia state coast, only stopping when he turned 100.

World War I was raging when Choules began training with the British Royal Navy, just one month after he turned 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.

"There was no sign of fight left in the Germans as they came out of the mist at about 10 a.m.," Choules wrote in his autobiography. The German flag, he recalled, was hauled down at sunset.

"So ended the most momentous day in the annals of naval warfare," he wrote. "A fleet of ships surrendered without firing a shot."

Millions died in the war, which lasted from 1914-1918. Choules and another Briton, Florence Green, became the war's last known surviving service members after the death of American Frank Buckles in February, according to the Order of the First World War, a U.S.-based group that tracks veterans.

Choules was the last known surviving combatant of the war. Green, who turned 110 in February, served as a waitress in the Women's Royal Air Force.

Choules met his wife Ethel Wildgoose in 1926 on the first day of his six-week boat trip from England to Australia, where he had been dispatched to serve as a naval instructor at Flinders Naval Depot in Victoria state. Ten months later, they were married.

They would spend the next 76 years together, until her death in 2003 at the age of 98.

/>http://www.startribune.com/world/121294359.html

An Australian, of course. Who else?

Edited May 5, 2011 by Mark Karlfeldt

[Ron Bleac]

I'm going to see if I can pick up his book anywhere. It must be a good read.

[Altus Nirvana]

110 years old. To imagine all the things hes witnessed of humankind. *Salutes*

[Aryte]

Epic.

[Tsume Xiao]

Wow. That is amazing. 110 years old. =x

[Vinnie Lei]

Amazing indeed o.o

[Kastrenzo Benelli]

I Was pretty sure the last WW I Veteran was a British guy who died last year, but then again this could even be false, given there was so many people in the wars there could still be some dude in France or Germany who fought in WW I

[Xoza]

Its amazing to think of all the things you've seen throughout history, or even what your going to see. But its even more so when you think of what your elders have seen beyond that.

[Desereck Creeggan]

The amount of change in the past 110 years has been momentous. Nearly every working family has a car, a TV, a computer with internet. Back then you still had to take baths with a bucket of water reused until everyone was clean. To imagine what he has seen in such a long lifetime... Truly amazing and slightly sad. I was just thinking about the last American WWI veteran who died in February today.

There's now no one alive to have witnessed that period of time and everything we have is now history.

[Kastrenzo Benelli]

The amount of change in the past 110 years has been momentous. Nearly every working family has a car, a TV, a computer with internet. Back then you still had to take baths with a bucket of water reused until everyone was clean. To imagine what he has seen in such a long lifetime... Truly amazing and slightly sad. I was just thinking about the last American WWI veteran who died in February today.

There's now no one alive to have witnessed that period of time and everything we have is now history.

That last statement is false. there are still people around who -Witnessed- the fighting, just alledgedly no one still around who fought in it are alive anymore.

[Desereck Creeggan]

That last statement is false. there are still people around who -Witnessed- the fighting, just alledgedly no one still around who fought in it are alive anymore.

That's what I meant. Sortof.