World’s oldest man and WWI veteran dies at 113

Henry Allingham, the world's oldest man and one of the United Kingdom's two remaining World War I veterans, died aged 113, the care home where he spent his last years said.

Allingham, who died peacefully in his sleep at 3:10am, attributed his longevity to "cigarettes, whisky, and wild, wild women", The Independent newspaper reported on June 20, the day after he became the world's oldest man following the death at 113 of Japanese national Tomoji Tanabe.

Born on June 6, 1896, Allingham left school at 15 and was working in a car factory in East London when the First World War broke out in 1914. He spent the war's first months refitting trucks for military use, but when his mother died in June 1915, he decided to join up after seeing a plane circling a reservoir in Essex, east of London. "It was a captivating sight," he wrote in his memoir. "Fascinated, I sat down on the grass verge to watch the aircraft. I decided that was for me."

Only a dozen years after the Wright brothers first put up their plane, Allingham and other airmen set out from eastern England on motorised kites made with wood, linen, and wire. They piled on clothes and smeared their faces in Vaseline, whale oil, or engine grease to block the cold.

"To be honest, all the planes were so flimsy and unpredictable — as well as incapable of carrying large fuel loads — at the start of the war that both British and German pilots would immediately turn back rather than face each other in the skies if they did not enjoy height supremacy," Allingham would later write. "But I remember getting back on the ground and just itching to take off again."

As a mechanic, Allingham’s job was to maintain the rickety craft. He also flew as an observer on a biplane. At first, his weaponry consisted of a standard issue Lee Enfield .303 rifle — sometimes two. Parachutes weren't issued. He fought in the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of World War I. He served on the Western Front, by now armed with a machine-gun. He was wounded in the arm by shrapnel during an attack on an aircraft depot but survived.

After the war he worked at the Ford motor factory and raised two children with his wife, Dorothy. She died in 1970, and when his daughter Jean died in 2001, friends say he waited to die, too.

That's when he met Goodwin, a lay inspector for nursing homes, who realised that veterans of Allingham's generation were not getting the care they needed to address the trauma they had experienced at the Somme, Gallipoli, and Ypres. Some veterans ached to return to the battlefields to pay their respects to their slain friends, and Goodwin found himself organising trips to France.

He encouraged Allingham to share his experiences and the veteran soon began talking to reporters and school groups, the connection to a lost generation. He found himself leading military parades. He was made an officer of France's Legion of Honour. He met Queen Elizabeth II and wrote his autobiography with Goodwin, Kitchener's Last Volunteer,  a reference to Britain's minister for war, Lord Kitchener, who rallied men to the cause. Prince Charles wrote the introduction.

Allingham grew accustomed to being one of the last ones standing. Last year, he joined Harry Patch, Britain's last soldier from the war, and the late Bill Stone, its last sailor, in a ceremony at the Cenotaph war memorial near Westminster in London, to mark the 90th anniversary of the war's end. As the wreaths were being laid, Allingham pushed himself up out of his wheelchair to place his arrangement at the base of the memorial.

Goodwin says Allingham's funeral will take place in Brighton. He is survived by five grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, 14 great-great grandchildren and one great-great-great grandchild.