Henry Allingham is someone most Americans have never heard of, and really in many ways there’s no reason you should’ve heard of him. He wasn’t a movie star, or a great explorer. He didn’t solve the great mysteries of the universe or invent anything. No, what he did instead was survive. He survived World War One and World War Two, and lived to the age of 113.
He died recently, and tributes are pouring in from across the UK and around the world. With his death, there are only four veterans of World War One left in the entire world. Just four, out of millions.
Allingham spent the last several years of his life trying to remind the younger generations (ie: everyone), about World War One. He survived the Western Front and the Battle of Jutland during that war. During the second one, he worked in countermeasures against mines.
When Allingham was born, McKinley was president and Victoria was the Queen. When I was born in 1972, he was already 76 years old. By the time the Wright Brothers flew their first plane, he was already a few years old, and was 73 when went to the Moon. When he was born, radio didn’t exist, and at the time of his death, the internet dominated.
Henry Allingham survived both world wars, the Great Depression, the 1918 Influenza and lived through parts of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Not bad. Not bad at all.
July 20, 2009 at 3:07 am
I wrote about him too.
Before him, the oldest man was a Japanese man who just died last month at almost 114 years old.
The current world’s oldest man is an American who’s almost 113.
http://tokyo5.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/recent-news/
July 22, 2009 at 5:37 pm
You know, up until Allingham died, there were five veterans of the war left. I kept wanting to refer to them as The Final Five, which is amusing only to fans of Battlestar Galactica and possibly not even them.
July 23, 2009 at 12:34 am
To read words of another man’s man from the Great War, visit Soldier’s Mail where you can find the letters home from the front of U.S. Sgt Sam Avery which are posted on the same date they were written over 90 years ago. http://worldwar1letters.wordpress.com