Last Men Standing - Last Known Survivors of Famous Battles

In 1947 I was a 4th of July parade in Huntington Beach,CA. I was 5 years old and remember watching hundreds of WW1 and WW2 Vets marching by. My Grandfater took me to a ancient old man and told to shake his hand. He had fought at the Battle of Gettysburg...

As a taxi driver in Wells, where Harry Patch lived in a Care Home, I was privileged to drive him on many occasions. He was invariably chatty and glad to get out and about. He always remembered my name and asked about my family. He loved a run to a nearby pub for his favourite fish & chips! He was loved and appreciated at his residence and was very popular with the ladies and staff. There is a beautiful commemorative stone outside the Wells Museum next to the Cathedral. A true gentleman who hated War.

I remember watching WWI in Colour when I was a teenager and Harry Patch saying, "Any man who tells you he went over the top and wasn't scared is a damned liar." Still gives me chills to this day.

The fate of Iron Hail and his family, both at the massacre of Wounded Knee and during WW2 is such a tragedy.

While leaving my local drug store I’d found a wallet just outside the door. Upon inspection there was the DOD blue retirement ID card for a Rear Admiral who lived about a mile away. Promptly returning his effects after introductions, he told me about standing on the deck of the Battleship Missouri as a young lieutenant for the formal surrender of Japanese forces in Tokyo Bay. A decade later I found myself on the same deck at Pearl Harbor and meeting someone present at a defining moment in history leaves a mark on you.

My great uncle was 16 at the time and was a watchman on a fishing trawler fishing about 200km south-west-west of Sandgerði in western Iceland. He was on watch at about 6am on the 24th of May 1941. Around that time over the wind and noise of the waves the men on deck could hear a faint explosion, it was faint but just loud enough to make out an explosion. He learned about 2 days later that the HMS Hood had been sunk around 150km west of their location and that explosion he heard was the blast that sunk the HMS Hood.

My grandpa was a sergeant in WW2 he mostly trained new pilots. I remember one day being at the hospital with him while my grandma was getting tests done. This was in the mid 1990s. Then a man approached my grandpa and asked if his name was Herman? He said it was and then the man introduced himself and it turns out he served under my grandpa during the war, he was one of the many new pilots he trained. My grandpa's eyes lit up and they talked for about an hour as he remembered him. I think that was the coolest thing ever seeing a mini WW2 reunion in of all places a hospital waiting room.

I like Mark’s sense of humour when he says the tortoise is too modest to wear the medals!

My wife's great-grandfather, born in 1895, served in Mexico with the US Army during the "punitive expedition" in 1916, then again with the US 37th Division in France during WW1.He passed away at age 105 in 2000. We are sure he was one of, if not the last, Great War veteran from Ohio. Sadly he suffered progressive dementia for the last 10 or so years of his life, and it was before I married into the family and became thier "honorary historian" so his story never was really told outside the immediate family, they are from a rural part of the state and never thought to "publicize" his service story. I also found out his grandfather was a Civil War veteran and they had relatives who fought in the war of 1812 as well.

I had the distinct privilege of being able to talk to a veteran of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, a few weeks ago, at my workplace. He's 96 years old, but is incredibly sprightly, and had quite a few stories and anecdotes to tell. It was a great pleasure to listen. After all, very few of his generation are left.

The last french veteran of the first world war died at the age of 110 in 2008. He was an italian immigrant to France who served in the french foreign legion in 1914 and 1915 before being forcibly transferee to the italian army from 1916 onwards. He was one of very few men to fight both ar Verdun and Capporetto. He went back to france after the war and his service earned him the french citizenship. He enlisted again in 1939 but was deemed too old for active service and saw no action before joining the resistance in 1942.

About 20 years ago I met an old man in Denmark who told me about how as a kid he was frightened by thunder, his mother told him it wasn’t thunder, it was the German ms and British shooting at each other. He lived at Skagerrak, Jutland! An old man who worked for me was a Lieutenant on the Prinz Eugen and told me what it was like when the Hood was sank and then watching Bismarck sail away when the split. He also was decorated by Hitler and they talked and shook hands. This was the man who’s hand I shook! Living history is all around us if we open our eyes and ears

The last last living veteran of Napoleonic wars was Geert Adriaans Boomgaard he was a Dutchmen in Napoleons army he was also the first documented human that reached the age of a 110. He passed away in 1899.

I remember the last Remembrance Sunday before Patch died - he tried everything he could to get out the wheelchair he was in and stand for the silence but sadly couldn't... He did manage to put down his own wreath on the Cenotaph and then sat at attention as he was wheeled off

The only honor I have is to have met a World War 2 veteran, Enrique Morey. He was buying scale-model magazines in a store when my dad met him. Enrique served as a PBY "Catalina", Lockheed Ventura, SBD Dauntless and TBM Avenger pilot, both in the Atlantic fighting the german U-Boots and in the Pacific, being aboard the US Enterprise the day before the attacks on Pearl Harbor and in the same carrier during the battle of Midway. He was great friend, such a cheerful and kind person. Sadly, their sons abandoned him so I used to go to his house to visit him and his wife, Wilma, where he always talked to me about his stories and experiences when he was young. Enrique and Wilma passed away almost at the same time, only by a difference of days, in August of 2018. I wish I could have said him goodbye for the last time.

I met one of the survivors of the USS Indianapolis in Audie Murphy VA Hospital back around 2008. Listening to his story for nearly 2 hours was one of the highest points of my life.

"I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who sent us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, rather than organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder." - Harry Patch (1898-2009) I have Harrys book The Last Fighting Tommy. Its an absolutely beautiful account of his early life, war experience (including when he refused to kill a German soldier), and his firefighting experience during the Blitz

"In a field of corn there is always a few stalks standing after the harvesters been through" as one WW1 Veteran stated.

There is just one of "The Few", the pilots who defended Britain during the Battle of Britain, left alive. He is an Irishman, John Hemingway, who flew Hurricanes with 85 Squadron, served in the RAF for 30 years and reached the rank of Group Captain. He is 102 years old.

As far as I am aware ( as of 2018 anyway) , there is one New Zealand "veteran" of WW1 still alive. Torty the Tortoise was picked up by a NZ stretcher bearer in Salonika after she had been run over by a french gun carriage but survived. She was smuggled ( not entirely legally ) back into NZ and still live with the family of the soldier that bought her home :)