Henry Allingham passes away
18th July 2009
Henry Allingham, the world's oldest man and one of the last surviving World War I servicemen, has died at the age of 113. Mr Allingham died in his sleep at 3.10am on Saturday at his St Dunstan's care home in Ovingdean near Brighton, after a life that saw him marked out as a national treasure. Mr Allingham served with the Royal Naval Air Service in WWI, later transferring to the Royal Air Force at the time of its creation. Last month, Mr Allingham, born in 1896, became the world's oldest man.

The Queen said he was "one of the generation who sacrificed so much for us all". A spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said the Queen's "thoughts are with his family during this time".

Obituary
Henry Allingham
6th June 1896 - 18th July 2009
Cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women was Henry Allingham's tongue in cheek recipe for his long life, which crossed over three centuries.

He was born in south London in June 1896 and brought up by his mother and grandparents following the death of his father, from TB, in 1897. After leaving school he obtained a job as a trainee surgical instrument maker but quickly moved into the motor trade where he worked building car bodies.

In 1914 he tried to join the army as a despatch rider but his mother, who was ill, persuaded him to stay at home and nurse her. She died a few months afterwards, age 42, and Henry, who later remembered feeling completely alone and with no purpose in life, joined the fledgling Royal Naval Air Service as a mechanic.

After his training he was posted to Great Yarmouth, where he maintained sea planes involved in anti submarine patrols in the North Sea and acted as an air gunner in operations to counter German Zeppelins. He was drafted onto HM trawler Kingfisher which headed north, in May 1916, as part of the British force sent to intercept the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland.

In what became the only major naval battle of the war, the British lost 14 ships and more than 6,000 lives, but the German fleet never again threatened to put to sea against the Royal Navy.

Allingham later recalled watching shells flying across the sea. "There were a lot of dud shells and that saved us from a lot of harm."

In 1917 he was posted to the Western Front where the RNAS was tasked with supporting squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps which was operating sorties over the battlefields of the Somme. He found himself in the trenches where he was ordered to neutralise the booby trapped bombs left behind by the retreating German soldiers.

On the Western Front
He never forgot the conditions on the ground. He later recalled being up to his armpits in water with the smell of mud and rotting flesh all around him. In November 1917 he was posted to an aircraft recovery depot at Dunkirk where he stayed for the remainder of the war. Even here, behind the lines, he was subject to German bombing raids and shellfire from the sea.

Six months later he was transferred to the newly formed Royal Air Force after the merger of the RFC and the naval air service. After his discharge from the RAF he went to work for the Ford Motor Company where he remained until he retired. His engineering expertise was called into use again in World War II where he worked on a project designed to neutralise German magnetic mines.

Since 1918 he had buried his memories of the war, avoiding reunions and refusing to discuss the subject with his family. But, in 2005, he was persuaded to unveil an RAF memorial in France and he decided it would have been disrespectful to his former comrades to refuse.

For the remainder of his life he was tireless in attending commemorative events, including the 90th anniversary of the Somme, and regularly spoke to schoolchildren about his wartime experiences. On his visit to the Somme in 2006 he was asked how he wanted to be remembered. "I don't" he said, "I want to be forgotten. Remember the others."

Mr Allingham leaves five grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren, 14 great-great grandchildren and one great-great-great grandchild. Henry lived a total of 41,314 days, which was 113 years 1 month 12 days.

Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary, said Mr Allingham's death marked "the end of an era".

Mr Allingham left a legacy of memories to the nation, according to Dennis Goodwin, from the First World War Veterans' Association. He said: "He left quite a legacy to the nation of memories of what it was like to have been in the First World War."

Mr Allingham’s death meant that Harry Patch, 111, the last survivor of the First World War trenches, was recorded as Britain’s oldest man. Sadly within a few days of Henry's death, Harry Patch passed away on the 25th July 2009. Nicknamed the ‘The Last Tommy’ Patch is a veteran of 1917’s battle of Passchendaele in which more than 70,000 British troops died.

A third known first world war survivor, Worcestershire-born Claude Choules, 108, who served with the Royal Navy, now lives in Australia.

Some of the key dates in the life of Henry Allingham
June 6, 1896: Henry William Allingham was born in Upper Clapton, east London. He was brought up by his mother and grandparents after his father died from tuberculosis. He left school to become a surgical instrument maker at St Bartholomew's Hospital in central London, before training as a coach-builder.

1914: He was keen to join the war effort, but was persuaded against the idea by his mother. After she died, Mr Allingham enlisted with the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) as a mechanic and body builder. He was sent to Chingford, east London, and Sheerness, Kent, before being posted to Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, where he helped maintain a wide range of aircraft and met his future wife, Dorothy Cater.

January 19, 1915: Mr Allingham experienced Britain's first aerial attack when the Germans, who were aiming for the Humber estuary, launched a Zeppelin raid on Great Yarmouth by mistake.

September 21, 1915: He was formally ranked as an Air Mechanic Second Class.

April 13, 1916: He narrowly missed out on meeting King George VI when he visited Great Yarmouth air station. Mr Allingham moved to nearby Bacton, where night-flying was carried out. Later he was involved in supporting anti-submarine patrols from a variety of seaplane carriers.

May 1916: He joined the armed trawler HMT Kingfisher, which carried a Sopwith Schneider seaplane and shadowed the British Grand Fleet during the greatest naval battle of the First World War - the Battle of Jutland.

September 1917: Mr Allingham, now an Air Mechanic First Class, was posted to the Western Front to service and rescue aircraft. When he joined RNAS No 12 Squadron based at St Omer, near Calais, France, it and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) were already involved in the third Ypres offensive - the Battle of Passchendaele. He was also posted to the Somme.

November 3, 1917: Mr Allingham was sent to a depot in Dunkirk where he spent the rest of the war recovering and repairing aircraft.

April 1, 1918: The RFC and the RNAS amalgamated to form the Royal Air Force (RAF). Mr Allingham was transferred to the service and given the rank of Rigger Aero, Aircraft Mechanic Second Class, and allocated a new service number - 208317.

November 11, 1918: Mr Allingham celebrated Armistice Day in Cologne, Germany, by getting his hair cut.

February 1919: He returned home and was formally discharged two months later. Shortly afterwards, he joined car manufacturer Ford, where he worked until his retirement, and married 22-year-old Miss Cater.

During the Second World War, Mr Allingham worked on weapons development for aircraft maker De Havilland and helped neutralise German magnetic mines.

May 8, 1945: Mr Allingham marked VE Day by turning on all the lights in his house in Essex, and going into the garden to dig.

1960: He retired to a flat in Eastbourne, East Sussex.

1970: His wife Dorothy died.

2003: Mr Allingham received France's highest military award, the Legion d'Honneur.

July 24, 2003: He met the Queen for the first time at a veterans' garden party in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.

June 21, 2004: He was one of the first veterans to receive the HM Armed Forces Veterans' Badge.

August 4, 2004: Mr Allingham led the congregation in the Lord's Prayer at a ceremony to mark the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, central London.

September 11, 2004: He unveiled a memorial in St Omer to the 4,700 British air personnel who died fighting on the Western Front.

October 6, 2005: He received honorary membership of the Fleet Air Arm Association which represents those who have served in the Fleet Air Arm - the aircraft division of the Royal Navy from 1937.

November 13, 2005: Mr Allingham attended the annual Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph for the fourth consecutive year.

May 2006: With his eyesight deteriorating, he moved from his flat in Eastbourne to St Dunstan's, a care home for blind ex-servicemen and women, in Ovingdean, near Brighton.

March 2009: He reached a new milestone when he became the oldest ever British man, clocking up 112 years and 296 days.

March 2009: Mr Allingham is awarded an upgraded Legion d'Honneur from French ambassador Maurice Gourdault-Montagne in London.

June 2009: Guinness World Records named Mr Allingham as the world's oldest man following the death of the previous record holder, Tomoji Tanabe, in Japan.