World War I Vet Visits English School

About forty English school kids at Wilnecote High School in Tamworth, Staffordshire, had a special guest visit their class recently. While the break from the usual drudgery that is school when one is 14 was welcome, the occasion is one they will remember for the rest of their lives. Henry Allingham, who at 110 is Britain’s oldest man and a World War I veteran, came by to talk to the class, some of whom may live into the 22nd century.

Mr. Allingham, who was born in Clapham on June 6, 1896, started his war as an Air Mechanic Second Class on September 21, 1915. In May 1916, he was assigned to the HMS Kingfisher, which had a Sopwith Seaplane onboard. As a result of this posting, he is the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland. He also saw service at Ypres and the Somme. Mr. Allingham is the last surviving founding member of the Royal Air Force.

He came to Wilnecote High School after the students there wrote letters to various war veterans asking for details about their service. Mr. Allingham offered to answer their questions in person. One young lady probably got more than she bargained for when she asked him what he remembered most from the Great War. He told her of a rain-filled hole he had fallen into, “Dead rats in that shell hole, human flesh, all rotting, who knows what in there...it was terrible.” He also told the generation of English kids who have always had fresh fruit at the supermarket about two oranges he gave to a couple of German children. “They [the Jaffa oranges] were not gold-dust then,” he said. “They were platinum dust.”

Mr. Allingham, though, didn’t get to be 110 without a sense of humor. When asked what the worst war was, he told his young friend, “The one I had!” And “How would you like to be remembered?” prompted him to reply, “I couldn’t care less.” He also has no small admiration for the self-confidence exhibited by the kids of Britain, “Much different from my day when children were to be seen and not heard.”

Faye Chadwick, one of Mr. Allingham’s new mates, told the BBC after this visit, “Textbooks are good but they aren’t necessarily reliable whereas Henry’s accounts are accurate as he has been there and actually seen it all happen.” Her fellow student Thomas Wooding agreed, “The books don’t tell you what it was really like but this is somebody who has been in battle themselves.”

It is said that history repeats itself and historians repeat one another. That tends to bore the bejesus out of the young. When the link is made, though, to living human beings to whom the past events happened, they take on a different view. Mr. Allingham has rendered Queen and Country yet another service.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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