“War is a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings”

Remembering forgotten veterans of World War I

 The last surviving verified veteran of World War I per country

There are no more surviving World War I veterans. They were largely remembered in the 1920s and 1930s, but now they have been overshadowed by the memory of WWII.

Harry Patch aged 109

Harry Patch, 109, at Passchendaele

The following video is a tribute to Harry Patch who Died on the 25th of July 2009 at the grand age of 111 years old . He was the oldest man in Europe and the last surviving British soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War. With his death went the British’s last link to the lost generation of young men who died in their millions and an era that was swept away forever.

Henry John “Harry” Patch (17 June 1898 – 25 July 2009), dubbed in his latter years “the Last Fighting Tommy”, was a British supercentenarian, briefly the oldest man in Europe and the last surviving soldier known to have fought in the trenches of the First World War.

John Babcock in 1920

John Henry Foster “Jack” Babcock (July 23, 1900 – February 18, 2010) was, at age 109, the last known surviving veteran of the Canadian military to have served in the First World War and, after the death of Harry Patch, was the conflict’s oldest surviving veteran. Babcock first attempted to join the army at the age of fifteen, but was turned down and sent to work in Halifax until he was placed in the Young Soldiers Battalion in August 1917.

Frank Woodruff Buckles (born Wood Buckles, February 1, 1901 – February 27, 2011), was the last surviving American veteran of World War I. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1917 and served with a detachment from Fort Riley, driving ambulances and motorcycles near the front lines in Europe.

Florence Beatrice Green (19 February 1901 – 4 February 2012) was the last surviving veteran of the First World War. She was a member of the Women’s Royal Air Force.