Last First World War Combat Veteran Dies

Claude Stanley Choules, 110, served in the Royal Navy before becoming a pacifist and moving to Australia.

The last surviving combat veteran of the First World War has died at the age of 110. Claude Stanley Choules joined the British Royal Navy as a 14-year-old in 1915, just as fighting was ramping up in Europe. Choules served aboard HMS Revenge from 1917-18, and witnessed the main German fleet's surrender from the deck of his ship. After the war, he became a pacifist, and upon moving to Australia he refused to march in Anzac Day parades, which honour Australia and New Zealand's wartime sacrifices. Choules' death leaves Florence Greene, who was a Royal Air Force waitress during the war, as the last surviving service member of the war to end all wars.