WORLD WAR ONE: THE SURVIVORS' STORIES
Mccaffrey
OF the near six million Britons who faced the blood and barbarism of the First World War, only ten are still alive today.
With an average age of 106, their bodies are frail but their memories remain strong.
To mark this week's Remembrance Day, each Great War veteran shares with the Daily Mirror their courageous but dignified stories of fighting for their Queen and country.Britain's Last Tommies, by Richard Van Emden, is published by Pen and Sword at £19.99. The Last Tommy will be shown tonight on BBC1 at 9pm, with a second part next Tuesday.
HENRY ALLINGHAM, 109
Royal Naval Air Service Mechanic
HENRY, Britain's oldest man, is the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland and the last founder member of the Royal Air Force.
He tried to enlist aged 18 but was dissuaded by his mum. When she died the next year he joined up as a mechanic with the Royal Naval Air Service, which merged with the Royal Flying Corps in April 1918 to become the RAF.
His squadron was ordered to the Western Front to fight over Ypres and the Somme. Henry says: "There were many accidents. Even when they landed safely, whoosh, it would be in flames. You'd see pilots burnt alive.
"You never forget the smell of death - it was a sweet smell. It stayed with you always.
"The friendship was something else. But once you lost a man you'd not mention him.
"I was shot in the arm in Ypres and I still can't believe I survived. I must have an angel hanging over my shoulders."
At the end of the war, Henry was in the army of occupation in Germany before being demobbed.
He became a car designer at Ford in Dagenham before retiring to Eastbourne, East Sussex.
Henry and his late wife Dorothy's 53-year marriage produced two daughters, who have both passed away. He has five grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren and lives in his own flat in Eastbourne.
In 2003 he was awarded France's highest military honour, the Legion d'Honneur.
HAROLD LAWTON, 106
Private, 4th East Yorkshire Regiment
FORMER university professor Harold, from Rhyl in South Wales, is believed to be the last surviving prisoner of the Great War.
Four exhausting months after being conscripted at 18, he was captured by enemy forces.
"In March 1918 we were ordered across the Channel to help halt the German offensive, and I was immediately sent to Armentieres. The men were exhausted and had suffered many casualties.
"I hadn't been there long when I was sent on a ration party to get some food. But we lost our way.
"The Germans mopped us up, stripped us of our weapons and marched us into captivity.
"We were taken to the Black Hole of Lille. It was truly awful - hundreds of men crammed into cells, unable to move and in filthy conditions.
"I was kept there for 12 days and was relieved to be taken to a prisoner of war camp at Minden in Germany.
"And like so many others, I was reported missing, believed killed.
"It was some time before I could write home."
Harold married, had three children, became a professor of French and instructed British troops during the Second World War.
He was awarded France's Legion d'Honneur, at the age of 99 and now lives in a retirement home in Northamptonshire.
ALFRED ANDERSON,109 Private, 15th Black Watch
ALFRED, Scotland's oldest man, is the last man alive to have witnessed the unofficial truce on Christmas Day, 1914, when German and Allied troops played football between the trenches.
Billeted away from the front line at the time and unable to take part in the game, he says: "There was a dead silence that morning, right across the land. We shouted 'Merry Christmas', even though nobody felt very merry.
"The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war."
Two years of Territorial Army training meant he was ready to fight when he was sent to France in October 1914. He says: "I remember cheering at the Territorials summer camp in Perthshire when war had been declared.
"When I got home and told my parents I'd be getting my call-up papers they were distraught. In France I became batman for Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon, the brother of the Queen Mother, who was among 500 killed in the Battle of Loos in 1915.
"During the battle of The Somme I was at a listening post in front of the lines when a shell burst overhead, killing many friends and wounding my neck and shoulder."
Alfred was invalided out in 1916. He served as a training sergeant before becoming a joiner.
He married, had six children and now lives in a bungalow in a village in Angus, Scotland.
He was also awarded France's highest honour, the Legion d'Honneur.
SYDNEY LUCAS, 105
Infantryman, 54th Sherwood Forresters
SYDNEY was 17 and living in Leicester when he was conscripted as a soldier, and became part of the army of occupation until he was demobbed in 1919.
He remembers: "We trained with a mix of fear and excitement, so when the war ended before we'd completed our training it almost felt like an anticlimax.
"We wanted to fight for our country, but I think that was more to do with boyish immaturity.
"My enduring memories are of being constantly cold, dirty, exhausted, homesick and lonely."
Sydney emigrated to Australia in 1928 with his late wife Winifred and now lives in Rosebud, Victoria, with his two children Sylvia, 80, and Howard, 77.
In 1940 he found himself out of work and enlisted in the Australian army. He served in Palestine with the 2nd and 1st Machine Gun Battalion.
While in service, Sydney fell ill and had to have his appendix and a gallstone removed, so he missed battles in Greece and Crete when Australian troops suffered tremendous loss of life.
He was transferred to Prisoner of War duty, guarding German and Italian PoWs.
After his honourable discharge, he became an aircraft factory worker and retired in 1960.
NICHOLAS SWARBRICK, 106
Merchant Navy wireless operator
NICHOLAS joined the Merchant Navy four days after qualifying as a wireless operator in 1915.
He served until the end of the war on a vessel called The Vestalagia, which travelled to the Far East to take consignments of horses to France for their horse-drawn artillery, and food to the UK.
But his ship was a constant target for German submarines.
He says: "I saw ships sunk all around me. And I always knew before anyone else because I manned the radio.
"I would receive Morse code SOS calls from other ships that were under attack, but knew we couldn't go and help them or we'd be in great danger from German U-boats.
"It was truly shocking.
"Fortunately I was never torpedoed, unlike many of my friends who were also in the Merchant Navy. They really were the unsung heroes of the Great War."
Nicholas stayed in the Merchant Navy and sailed the world until 1932, then returned to work on his father's cattle farm.
He never married and now lives in a nursing home near Preston in Lancashire, overlooking the land that his father and he once farmed.
HARRY PATCH, 1077th Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry
HARRY served in the Ypres Salient, France. He was sent to the trenches in Passchendaele on his 19th birthday, in June 1917.
His experiences of warfare, as a private with the 7th battalion, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, have haunted him ever since.
"Talking about my time in the war was never easy," says Harry, from Bath.
"So for 80 years I didn't speak a word of it - not even to my wife and two sons.
"Now I realise that talking helps keep the history alive. I remember when the battalion was going through to the support line, when a whiz-bang burst just behind me.
"The force of the explosion threw me to the floor, but I didn't know I'd been hit for two or three minutes.
"Burning metal knocks the pain out of you at first.
"We lived hour by hour and I saw many comrades killed.
"It was a living hell."
When he left the Army, Harry became a plumber working in Coombe Down, Somerset. Married twice, he now lives in a residential home in nearby Wells.
WILL YOUNG, 105
14th Royal Horse Artillery, Royal Flying Corps
LONDON-born William trained as a wireless operator with the Royal Flying Corps. He was sent to Marques in France in 1918, and served in the trenches for five months.
"Everybody got lice - that was the worst thing," he says. "The seams in our trousers were too wide, maybe a quarter of an inch, so whenever we had time we undid the sewing, killed the lice and sewed them back up again, smaller and tighter, so no more lice could get in.
"The rats were terrible, too. I used to cover up my head at nighttime in the trenches but I could feel them running over me.
"If you lifted your head above the trench you'd be shot by a sniper. That happened to many men.
"Our duty was to man the Morse Code receiver and I was trained to read and send it to a high speed. I had to be quick and accurate, there were no wireless communications for the spoken word.
"Planes didn't have any radios, so the only way we could communicate with them was by placing white strips of material on the ground in the shape of letters, which pilots read when they flew overhead.
"I also had to fight. One night I was by a dug-out when a shell burst on my right and blew in all directions. A piece flew across my chest and tore my uniform. That was the nearest I came to getting hit. But it was close enough."
William later trained as a chemist and worked in Argentina, then Borneo. He married, had one son, and now lives in a retirement home near Perth, Western Australia.
KEN CUMMINS, 105
Royal Navy midshipman
AFTER completing a naval cadetship, Ken served on board HMS Worcester until 1917 as a midshipman.
His duty was to protect the Atlantic convoys travelling between England and Sierra Leone. His first voyage was horrifying.
"We were sailing through the Bristol Channel, and suddenly found ourselves sailing through dead bodies," says Ken, from Richmond, Surrey.
"The Jerries had bombed a hospital ship and the corpses of nurses were all around us.
"I was only young, and couldn't help being sick over the edge at the sight of it. I still have nightmares about that.
"Memories throughout a long life fade, but that, and seeing a Zeppelin being shot down, I can recall as if they happened yesterday."
After being demobbed in 1919, Ken went back to his job at P&O and spent the rest of his career with the company, rising from fourth officer to captain in 1945.
His first job as captain was taking Italian prisoners of war home.
Ken married Rosemary in 1955. The couple had two sons and two daughters and now live in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire.
BILL STONE, 105
Royal Naval Air Service Mechanic
ONE of 14 children, Bill tried to join the Navy at 15, but his dad would not sign permission forms because three of his five brothers were already fighting.
So he waited until he was called up on his 18th birthday, then signed up as a trainee stoker, learning the skills essential to keep a ship moving.
Devon-born Bill was in the Navy for 27 years, took part in the Dunkirk landings and was twice torpedoed in the Second World War.
He remembers: "At the end of the First World War on November 11, I was in hospital with flu in barracks in Devonport. Thousands of men died from flu - they'd be on parade and just keel over.
"At the time I just did what all the boys my age did. But looking back, I can barely believe I emerged unscathed.
"I always say 'God help us'. I've said it many times and it has always helped tremendously. I have been very lucky."
All but one of Bill's 12 medals were for bravery. After leaving the Navy, Bill, of Watlington, Oxfordshire, set up as a tobacconist and hairdresser.
He and his late wife Lily had a daughter, Anne, and two grandchildren.
BILL ROBERTS, 106
Corporal, Royal Flying Corps
BILL'S father, who was serving with the Royal Engineers, was killed by a German sniper in 1915.
Bill believes this terrible event influenced him to join the Royal Flying Corps - which became the RAF in 1918 - still some months shy of his 16th birthday.
He was posted to the RFC's aircraft factory at Farnborough testing, maintaining and repairing bullet-riddled planes.
He recalls: "I thought I was a tough man, full of bravado, but I was shocked by what I saw.
"I saw lots of aircraft crashes during training and a lot of good men dead in the cockpit.
"I sometimes went up with them - and once ended up flying upside down.
"It saddened me to see so many men's bravery and it made me realise just how unreliable planes could be."
After his dis-charge in 1918, Bill transferred into the RAF's transport side and became a leading craftsman, a job he retained until the 1930s.
Bill later joined a bus company in Derby and retired as a rolling stock engineer.
quote:Bron: forumeerstewereldoorlog.nlWar veteran recallsChristmas truce
The First World War’s Christmas truce may be a very long time ago, but the memories remain deeply etched on the mind of the only surviving soldier to have experienced the extraordinary ceasefire — Dundee-born Alfred Anderson.
Mr Anderson was 18 on December 25, 1914, when British and German troops climbed out of their trenches in France and walked across the shell-blasted mud of no man’s land to shake hands.
Now 109, and holder of France’s highest honour, the Legion d’Honneur, he has never forgotten how the bloodshed briefly stopped as the bitter enemies sang carols, shared cigarettes and swapped tunic buttons.
Most famously, the troops played football together, kicking around empty bully-beef cans and using their caps or steel helmets as goalposts.
The Black Watch veteran — who received his 10th telegram from the Queen in June — is too frail now to take part in the Remembrance Day ceremonies.
But he will be thinking of the comrades who never made it home as he watches the coverage on TV at Mundamalla Nursing Home in Alyth, where he is a resident.
The father of four’s daughter Chrissie Maxwell (72), of Alyth, said, “He wouldn’t miss the November 11 commemorations for all the world.
“He’s a marvellous man, who’s never forgotten the dear friends he lost in the Great War. But he doesn’t like to speak about it, as he gets too upset.”
Mr Anderson’s unit, the 5th Battalion, The Black Watch, was one of the first to be deployed to France in October, 1914, when the First World War broke out.
He is Scotland’s oldest man, and the last in the world known to have served in the conflict on December 25 that year, when the unauthorised truce was declared. Mr Anderson was billeted in a dilapidated farmhouse away from the front line at the time, and did not take part in the kickabouts.
But only last year, while still in good health, he vividly recalled, “All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machine-gun fire and distant German voices.
“But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted ‘Merry Christmas’, even though nobody felt merry.
“The silence ended early in the afternoon, and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war.”
Mr Anderson was a sergeant at the time he was invalided out in 1916, the victim of a shell explosion which left him with serious shrapnel wounds.
He was already too old for active service in the Second World War, but helped set up the Home Guard units.
Fiercely proud of his army service, Mr Anderson still keeps his treasured Black Watch cap with the famous red hackle.
But throughout his long life, the events of the First World War — especially at Christmas time — have haunted him. And as one of the few remaining survivors of the “war to end all wars”, he remains saddened by the bloodshed of modern day conflicts.
Mrs Maxwell said, “When he sees what’s going on in Iraq, he says, ‘When will it ever stop? When will we ever learn?’”
Ze doen stuk voor stuk hun verhaal, aangevuld met authentieke beelden.
Mr Anderson, schotlands oudste man en Last Tommie, sloot gisteren het programma af met de woorden.
Het komt allemaal boven, en ik had gehoopt vredig te kunnen sterven...
BBS, dinsdags 22 uur.
quote:Ik was nog niet klaarOp woensdag 9 november 2005 10:59 schreef Dementor het volgende:
Gister was er op de BBC een docu over.
Gezien?
The events of the First World War's Christmas truce may be a very long time ago - but they remain deeply etched on the mind of the only surviving soldier to have experienced the extraordinary ceasefire.
Alfred Anderson was 18 on December 25, 1914, when British and German troops climbed out of their trenches in France and walked across the shell-blasted mud of no man's land to shake hands.
The Black Watch veteran - who was born in Dundee in 1896 and received his 10th telegram from the Queen in June - is too frail now to take part in Remembrance Day ceremonies. But he watched the coverage of the event on TV at Mundamalla Nursing Home in Angus where he is a resident.
Now 109 and a holder of France's highest honour, the Legion d'Honneur, he has never forgotten how the bloodshed briefly stopped as the bitter enemies sang carols, shared cigarettes and swapped tunic buttons. Most famously, the troops played football together, kicking around empty bully-beef cans and using their caps or steel helmets as goalposts.
The father of four's daughter Chrissie Maxwell, 72, of Alyth, Angus, said: "He wouldn't miss the November 11 commemorations for all the world. He's a marvellous man who's never forgotten the dear friends he lost in the Great War. But he doesn't like to speak about it as he gets too upset."
Mr Anderson's unit, the 5th Battalion of the Black Watch, was one of the first to be deployed in France in October 1914 when the First World War broke out.
He is Scotland's oldest man and the last in the world known to have served in the conflict on December 25 that year, when the unauthorised truce was declared.
The Scot was billeted in a dilapidated farmhouse away from the front line at the time and did not take part in the kickabouts.
But only last year, while still in good health, he vividly recalled: "All I'd heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machine-gun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted 'Merry Christmas', even though nobody felt merry.
"The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war."
bron: www.forumeerstewereldoorlog.nl