The Last WWI Veteran

He's the last of his combat generation:

Claude Stanley Choules, the last known combat veteran of World War I, died on Thursday in a nursing home in Western Australia. He was 110.

...World War I was raging when Mr. 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.

...Mr. Choules and another Briton, Florence Green, became the war’s last known surviving service members after the death of Frank Buckles, an American, in February, according to the Order of the First World War, a United States-based group that tracks veterans. Ms. Green, who turned 110 in February, was a waitress in the Women’s Royal Air Force.

...Mr. Choules eventually settled in Australia and served in the Navy there until his retirement in 1956.

During World War II, he was the acting torpedo officer in Fremantle, Western Australia, and chief demolition officer for the western side of the Australian continent. Mr. Choules disposed of the first mine to wash ashore in Australia during the war.

Despite the fame his military service (and longevity) brought him, Mr. Choules became a pacifist later in life, refusing to participate in anything that glorified war.