The Life of Henry Allingham, the Oldest Surviving Veteran of the Great War

Henry Allingham was born June 6, 1896. In that year the first traffic fatality occurred, and the first speeding ticket was issued - to a car speeding along at 8mph in a 2mph zone! He volunteered for service in 1915 serving with the Royal Naval Air Service, the forerunner of the RAF. Allingham saw action at the Battle of Jutland and was at the front lines at Passchendaele. As he was in the RNAS he did not take part in the trench warfare. On numerous occasions he refers to the men in the trenches as having won the war, all the while suffering unspeakable conditions. Throughout his life Henry Allingham was talented, positive and charming. He was a gem. When he was 100 years old and his deteriorating vision meant he could no longer drive he got a bicycle. A photo of him on the bike on his 100th birthday, shows a man who looks like he was thirty years younger.

Henry Allingham became Britain's oldest living man March 29, 2009. As his counterpart veterans from other nations died, he became the sole survivor of the RNAS and the last founding member of the RAF. In 2007 he became the oldest known veteran of WWI. On the death of Tomoji Tanabe in Japan, June 19, 2009, Henry became the world's oldest man. He died July 18, 2009.

Allingham's memories are interspersed with passages by Dennis Goodwin, of the Veteran's Association, who elaborates on Henry's memories and describes events of the day. In the early years it was useful to have the memories of a child filled out, however, as the book progresses Goodwin's passages become more dominant and less interesting. I have to admit that towards the end of the book I speed-read them. Allingham's story was much more engaging.

http://www.theguardian.com/global/2009/jul/18/obituary-henry-allingham ( )

Readers hoping that this novel is an account of the authors experiences of the First World War are likely to be disappointed by this short book. Those events cover rather less than half the pages. Rather, this is a brief account of the life of Henry Allingham, who despite an unusually wide breadth of experiences it the 1914-18 conflict (he witnessed the Battle of Jutland and later became part of the embryonic RAF), really became celebrated because of his extraordinary age, living to 112 and becoming Britain's oldest man in the process. Much of the book is a description of how he enjoyed, and adjusted to, the renown in which he was held in the last years of his remarkable life. It is an endearing tale, and Allingham's strength of personality, his thirst for knowledge and his interest in progress and the future shine though. You can't help wonder whether it was those character traits that contributed to his longevity. ( )

A marvellous and moving account of this wonderful and yet also ordinary man. I bought this book on 18 July, the day he died aged 113 years and about six weeks, it having been on my wishlists for a year or so. Henry's positive outlook on life and his basic optimism about human nature come through clearly here, as opposed to the somewhat bitter undercurrent in Harry Patch's book.

The interludes by Dennis Goodwin on concurrent events and developments at the appropriate stages in Henry's life are mostly useful, though occasionally intrusive and a little over long. There are also occasional inconsistencies in the cited figures for numbers of surviving veterans and the odd factual error, e.g. date of Harold Wilson's becoming PM inaccurately stated as 1968. ( )

A good read. Henry was until his death in July 09, Britains oldest man. The book is very simply written, but contains many interesting memories of the early days of flight, cars restricted to 4mph and the sailing of the Titanic ( )