Claude Choules – Wikipedia

Claude Stanley Choules (Pershore, March 3, 1901 – Perth, May 5, 2011) was an Australian naturalized English military and super -nengine.
It was above all the last veteran who participated in the fights of the Great War. It was also the last living soldier who served in both world conflicts. At the time of his death, at the age of 110, he was also the third oldest verified military veteran in the world and the oldest living man in Australia (the 7th among men from all over the world). Choules became the oldest man born in the United Kingdom after the death of Stanley Lucas in June 2010 and survived about 67 days more than Frank Buckles, the last American veteran of the First World War. Florence Green, officially considered the last veteran woman of the Great War, survived him, even if, unlike Choules, he never properly took part in military actions.

Born in Pershore, in the Worcestrshire, and raised in nearby Wyre Piddle, son of Harry and Madeline (Nata Winn), in April 1915 Choots enrolled in the school ship Mercury Before the transfer to the Royal Navy in October 1916 to serve on board the HMS training ship Circe in Plymouth. In 1917 he embarked on the battleship Revenge , the flagship of First Battle Squadron, and while serving on it, Choules was witness to the surrender of the German imperial navy that took place on the summer of the Ford river in 1918, ten days after the armistice. He was also present at the self -employment of the German Flow Flow fleet on June 21, 1919.
In 1926, with 11 other sailors of the Royal Navy, he traveled to Australia, providing service as an instructor at the Flinders Naval Deport. Here he had the opportunity to appreciate the Australian way of life and therefore decided to pass definitively in the Royal Australian Navy (Ran). He took assignment in Ran in 1931 as a reserve, only to return to action in 1932 as an instructor on the Torpedo CPO and the anti -Sommergible. Choules never returned to England, his native country.

During the Second World War, Choules became an official of the HMas Fremantle ship but was also in charge of sabotage of the ports of Fremantle and the related oil reserves in the event of Japanese invasion. CHoules also took care of removing the first thorn left by the Germans on the Australian territory during the war, in particular near Esperance, Western Australia.

Choules remained in the Ran even after the Second World War, but was transferred to the Naval Dockyard Police (NDP) to allow him to remain in service until 1956, since at the time the retirement age for the members of the Ran was 50 years old, while for the NDP staff it was 55 years old.

He was linked to his wife Ethel for 80 years, or until her death, which took place at the age of 98.

Choules avoided the celebrations of the armistice because it was against the glorification of the war; However, it appears in the BBC documentaries The Last Tommy of 2005 e Harry Patch – l’ultimo Tommy of 2009 and always in 2009 his autobiography was published The Last of the Last .

In April 2010 his daughter Daphne Edinger declared that father’s health had worsened much and that he would no longer be able to grant interviews. He was now almost completely blind and deaf, but he came to celebrate his 110th birthday in March 2011, dying two months later.

Choules died on May 5, 2011 in the Salter Point nursing home, a suburb of Perth. 3 children, 11 grandchildren and 22 bisnipotes survived him. After his death, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared: “Mr. Choules and his generation have made a sacrifice for our freedom and for our democracy that we will never forget” . The funeral was celebrated on 20 May following. It is buried in the Fremantle Cemetery in Palmyra, in the city of Melville, in the metropolitan area of ​​Perth. ^[first]