With World War II veterans in their late 80s and beyond, it’s hard to believe that until the last year a few vets of the First World War were still around.
This month its last known survivor died – 110-year-old Briton Florence Green, who signed up with the new Women’s Royal Air Force in September 1918 and served two months on active duty before the Armistice. Her job was waiting on tables in the officers’ mess at Narborough Airfield and RAF Marham, Norfolk.
In 2011 we lost the last known combat vet of the war, Claude Choules, who was born in Britain and died in Australia, and the last known American non-combat vet, Frank Buckles of West Virginia.
With Florence gone, so is all modern memory of the Great War, which broke out almost a hundred years ago.
Isn’t it amazing that it hung on for so long?
David Venditta 