World War I veteran makes remembrance his mission

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

He is 112, nearly blind, mostly deaf and confined to 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 said quietly, speaking after the opening of a Royal Air Force Museum exhibition on the conflict. "We were pals."

For decades, Mr. Allingham didn't talk about the Great War. 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. Mr. Allingham, Britain's last flier; Harry Patch, the last soldier; and Bill Stone, the last sailor, will lay wreaths 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 such major players as 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.

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 major 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.

Mr. 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."

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.

Mr. 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.

After she died of cancer in 1915, Mr. 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.

Mr. Allingham and other air pioneers set out on elaborate kites cobbled together with wood, linen and wire. As a mechanic, his job was to maintain the rickety craft. He also flew as an observer on a BE2c, a plane with so little power that a strong wind might push it backward. In a time of limited radio capability, the airmen flew with two carrier pigeons that would be released with coordinates tied to their feet in case of water landing, so searchers could track the wreckage. They weren't issued parachutes.

His wife, Dorothy, died in 1970, but when his daughter, Jean, died in 2001, friends say he mostly waited to die, too.

That's when he met Dennis Goodwin, an independent inspector for residential care homes, who had discovered that elderly men were often not getting the care they needed to address their war nightmares.

He encouraged Mr. Allingham to share his experiences. Soon, Mr. Allingham began talking to reporters and school groups. He wrote his autobiography with Mr. Goodwin, Kitchener's Last Volunteer , a reference to Britain's war secretary who rallied men to the cause. Prince Charles wrote the introduction.

"I still can't believe that all this happens to me," he wrote.