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In the past year, we brought you the obituaries of Frank Buckles, the last U.S. veteran of World War I and Claude Choules, the last surviving combat veteran of that war. Yesterday, the very last member of the military from the War to End All Wars passed away.
Florence Green was only 17 years old when she signed up for the Women’s Royal Air Force in 1918. She worked at the military airfields in Norfolk.
Mrs Green spent her war days working ”all hours” serving officers breakfast, lunch and dinner and would often spend time wandering the base simply ”admiring the pilots”.
Before her death she said: ”I enjoyed my time in the WRAF. There were plenty of people at the airfields where I worked and they were all very good company.
”I would work every hour God sent but I had dozens of friends on the base and we had a great deal of fun in our spare time. In many ways I had the time of my life.
”I met dozens of pilots and would go on dates. I had the opportunity to go up in one of the planes but I was scared of flying.
”It was a lovely experience and I’m very proud.”
Mrs. Green was a couple weeks short of 111 years old. Link -via reddit
Joe Johnson has lived at the Morningside retirement center in Greenwood, South Carolina, for about ten years now. He’s been a regular blood donor for most of his life, and sees no reason to stop now.
Johnson said in the same phone call that he began donating after he joined the Army in Tennessee at age 21 and kept it up after moving to Florida, and then later South Carolina. The former infantry soldier said he served in Europe — though not in combat — and back in the United States, training National Guard forces.
“They’d say to us, ‘Line up and give blood’ and maybe out of 200 or so in the company, maybe 40 or 50 guys would do it. Some people would just walk away, but I never did,” Johnson said. “I constantly gave blood. I had a routine going.”
Johnson celebrated his 96th birthday on Tuesday with a cake, which Amerson said he insisted on sharing with some of the other 43 residents at the assisted living home. His most recent blood donation was a week earlier when a mobile unit made one of its periodic visits to the retirement home.
There is no upper age limit for blood donation, as long as the donor is healthy. Johnson plans to continue giving, and says he is “good for a few years more.” Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: AP/The Blood Connection)
You’ve heard the saying, “Freedom isn’t free”? Apparently neither is a Purple Heart. Retired Sergeant Major Rob Dickerson was wounded by a rocket blast in Iraq in 2007. It took years of paperwork for the army to decide that Dickerson had, indeed, been wounded in war. His Purple Heart was delivered with a C.O.D. bill for $21. Dickerson was not pleased.
Dickerson says this is not about him, but other soldiers who may have the same thing happen to them. He says they should get better treatment from the United States Military, especially after laying their lives on the line while serving their country.
“I don’t want you to think I’m whining and complaining, because I’m not, I really don’t want this to happen to another soldier or any service member of the United States, it’s degrading,” Dickerson said.
Dickerson did get an apology and a money order for his out of pocket costs, but he says he couldn’t cash it, because it was made out to Roy Dirksen, not Rob Dickerson.
Traditionally, the Purple Heart is awarded in a ceremony. Link -via Fark
Claude Stanley Choules died today at a nursing home in Perth, Australia, at the age of 110. Choules was the last known combat veteran of World War I.
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’ autobiography is entitled The Last of the Last. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: LSIS Nadia Monteith,AP Photo/Royal Australian Navy)
Frank W. Buckles celebrated his 110th birthday on February first. He died peacefully at his home on Sunday morning. Buckles was one of 4,734,992 Americans who served in World War I. With his death, there are no more surviving US veterans of that war.
Buckles, who served as a U.S. Army ambulance driver in Europe during what became known as the “Great War,” rose to the rank of corporal before the war ended. He came to prominence in recent years, in part because of the work of DeJonge, a Michigan portrait photographer who had undertaken a project to document the last surviving veterans of that war.
As the years continued, all but Buckles had passed away, leaving him the “last man standing” among U.S. troops who were called “The Doughboys.”
In recent years, Buckles became an advocate for a memorial in Washington to honor those who served in the “Great War”. Link -via Fark
Jackie Roy Tuner, a US veteran of the invasion of Normandy, plays the trumpet. In this video, he shares a story about one night when, on the front line, he played his trumpet to entertain troops on both sides.
via reddit
Twenty-seven-year-old Johno Lee, a British veteran of the war in Afghanistan, applied for and was denied a disabled parking permit three times. Meanwhile, he racked up £800 in fines for parking in reserved spots so he could unload his wheelchair.
Lance-corporal Lee, from Coddington, said when he first applied to Nottinghamshire County Council for a blue badge he was advised he was young and ‘may get better.’
His right leg was amputated below the knee after he was caught up in an explosion in Helmand Province in 2008.
He said: “I replied that they possibly didn’t quite understand the situation and that I thought it unlikely that my leg would grow back.
After the local newspaper the Newark Advertiser heard of his story, a reporter contacted officials who are now looking into the matter. The fines already levied against Lee have been rescinded. Link -via Arbroath
When Alistair Hodgson was 21, he was a British paratrooper stationed in Northern Ireland. A booby trap exploded and tore him apart. His horrific injuries healed, except for the leg that was blown off and the other leg which had to be amputated. That was 17 years ago. Now Hodgson is the British National Freestyle Skydiving Champion. Besides training in his sport and coaching other skydivers, Hodgson works to inspire other disabled vets returning from Afghanistan.
“It’s so hard. But you have to rehabilitate yourself, find a focus…something to hold on to. If I can inspire just one other person to lift themselves out of that same dark place I was in – train for the Paralympics in 2012 or something, then it’s worth it.
“There was a time I thought my life was over and I still have very dark times when it’s difficult to deal with. Sometimes people poke fun at me or I catch sight of myself in a mirror and think, ‘You’re in a hell of a mess’.
“But when I’m in the air it’s like it never happened. I can compete at a world level – alongside people who have all their limbs – and have found a way to fly.”
Hodgson will compete against able-bodied skydivers for the world championship in August. Link -via Fark
Maité Roël of Bovekerke, Belgium is the youngest victim of the first World War. As a disabled war victim, she carries a veteran’s card that entitles her to reduced train fares, but gets suspicious looks when she uses it. Roël was only nine years old when an RAF bomb that was inadvertently thrown on a bonfire nearly destroyed her leg. She underwent 29 operations and was addicted to morphine for ten years.
“We went on a scout camping expedition to Wetteren and I remember now that it was an old military camp,” Maité recalls very slowly. She has tiny dreadlocks that hang down her slim face and a silver ring in her nose – not the usual face of a First World War victim. “It was July 6th, 1992. I knew nothing about war. I remember we all built a fire using bricks round the outside and the other kids starting throwing logs on it. I was tired and so I went a few metres from the fire so I could sleep. Then there was a sudden explosion – I woke up and saw sparks from the explosion. Everyone was running and shouting and I tried to get up and I couldn’t. Everyone was looking at me and I looked down – and I saw that my left leg was hanging by a piece of skin.”
Roël is under the care of the Belgian Institute for Veterans’ Affairs and War Victims. She has no interest in learning about the war that affected her life. Link -via YesButNoButYes
(image credit: Laurent Lenclud)
