Oldest WWI survivor remembers forgotten ones

updated 1:08 p.m. ET Nov. 11, 2008

LONDON - Henry Allingham is the oldest living link to the 9 million soldiers killed in World War I.

He is 112 now, nearly blind, mostly deaf and uses a wheelchair — none of which stops him from trying to remind everyone of those long gone.

"I don't want to see them forgotten," he says quietly, speaking after the opening of a Royal Air Force Museum exhibition on the conflict. "We were pals."

For decades, Allingham didn't talk about the Great War. And then, after he hit 100, he made talking about it his mission — the excitement at the start, the thrill of flying, the blood, the lice, the fear, the dead.

His next task is to lay a wreath at Britain's war memorial, the Cenotaph, near the houses of Parliament in London, to mark the 90th anniversary of the war's end. Allingham, Britain's last flyer; Harry Patch, the last soldier, and Bill Stone, the last sailor, will lay wreaths on Tuesday.

They are the last ones standing, out of the more than 5 million who fought for Britain in World War I. The last survivors in Germany, France and Turkey have died, veterans groups said. The last living American-born veteran is 107-year-old Frank Woodruff Buckles of Charles Town, W.Va.

Dwindling ranks
The dwindling of the ranks has given additional importance to this year's ceremonies, likely the last major anniversary in which they will be able to take part. It comes after a series of 90th-anniversary commemorations of the war's worst battles — the Somme, Jutland, Ypres.

"This is the climax of something that has a momentum all its own," said William Philpott, a senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King's College in London.

Allingham doesn't talk much about other wars. But he does say in his memoir, "Kitchener's Last Volunteer," that he feels sorry for young soldiers fighting in Iraq.

"It was not the same in my war," he says. "We were fighting for our country and our homes... We had a lot more to lose if we failed."

He takes your hand, covers it between his, until his long soft fingers completely make your hand disappear. He looks into your eyes, trying to remember if he's met you before.

He seems glad you've come. He has something to tell you.

"We have to pray it never happens again."

'Chocks away!'
In a time when many wars take place far from home, it can be hard to imagine the war to end all wars. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne during his visit to Sarajevo in 1914 touched off a cataclysm that echoed into much of the ensuing century.

Allingham wanted to leave his job in a car plant and join up right away. But when his widowed mother learned of her only child's plans, she made him promise not to leave. Allingham spent the war's first months refitting trucks for military use.

After she died of cancer in 1915, Allingham joined the Royal Naval Air Service, a precursor to the Royal Air Force.

He was hoping to go to East Africa. He ended up on the east coast of England.

Only a dozen years after the Wright brothers first put up their plane at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Allingham and other air pioneers set out on elaborate kites cobbled together with wood, linen and wire. They piled on clothes and smeared their faces in Vaseline, whale oil or engine grease to block the cold.

"It was so noisy," Allingham would later write in his memoir. "I do remember the deafening throb and the chap on the ground shouting 'Chock's away!'"

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