Last of the Last

Claude Stanley Choules, who served in various militaries for over 40 years, was the last surviving combat veteran from World War I. Aged 110, he died in his sleep in an Australian nursing home on Wednesday night.

Choules lied to the British Navy about his age to sign up as a teenager in 1916, later witnessing the German fleet's surrender in 1918 and its subsequent scuttling off the coast of Scotland in 1919.

After the war, the Worcestershire-born sailor moved to Perth and joined the Australian Navy, working as a demolition expert at Freemantle Harbor - he once said he specialized in "blowing things up." Choules remained in some form of active service until 1956.

Never such innocence again

Choules' decades of service, however, left him war-weary, and he did not attend Armistice Day celebrations or Australia's annual ANZAC day celebrations after retiring from the military.

"He always said that the old men make the decisions that send the young men into war," his son Adrian recalled. "He used to say, if it was the other way around, and the old … were off fighting, then there would never be any wars."

His daughter Daphne Edinger summed it up, saying her father "didn't think we should glorify war."

According to the Order of the First World War, a group that tracks veterans of the conflict, Choules and his countrywoman, Florence Green, were the last known surviving service members from the Great War of 1914 to 1918. Green was a waitress in the women's Royal Air Force.

Choules became the last known combat veteran from the conflict in 2009 after the death of British soldiers Henry Allingham and Harry Patch. That same year, he published his autobiography, entitled "The Last of the Last."

Author: Mark Hallam (AFP, AP, Reuters)
Editor: Rob Turner