The Oldest Man in the World Dies at Age 113

Henry Allingham, considered the world's oldest man at age 113, died on July 18, 2009, ending a long and illustrious life. He never invented a marvelous device or made significant scientific contributions. He lived an average, modest life in Britain, but his life story reminds each of us of the changes that have occurred in his long life. And it reminds us to pay attention to how we live our own lives and what stories we will have to share at the end of our time.

For Mr. Allingham, he found a purpose in serving as a living reminder of what Britons call the Great War, World War 1. As a teenager he went to war, survived being wounded and came home when millions of men did not, killed in the trenches of France and Spain, shot down in those early warplanes, or left to watery graves in the Atlantic.

Mr. Allingham, wanted people to know and remember "his pals", the men who died in that Great War. He didn't want us to forget the sacrifices they made.In the United States there is only one living American born veteran of World War 1, Frank Woodruff Buckles of Charles Town, West Virginia.

Allingham was born on June 6, 1896, during the reign of Queen Victoria and said he could recall seeing the coronation of King Edward in 1902. Think of the difference between that time and now. In 1902, there were no automobiles, coal was the fuel that heated homes, street lighting was by gaslight, and yet..there were the beginnings of modern day changes.

The world was on the brim of being transformed by modern technology. The same technologies that would be used in that Great War. One year later, in 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright had their first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their planes would be transformed into those first bombers of World War 1 In Michigan, Henry Ford was preparing to make the Model T which came out in 1913.

Would the Great War have been as massive without these two modern inventions?

For Mr. Allingham, it was the airplane that drew him to the war. He had been working in an automobile factory when the war began, refitting trucks for military use. But when he saw a plane in the air east of London, he was "captivated". He wrote in his memoir, "Fascinated, I sat down on the grass to watch the aircraft. I decided that was for me."

Only a dozen years after that first Kitty Hawk flight, Allingham and other British airman began flying basically what were motorized kites, flimsy and incapable of carrying large fuel loads. Allingham was a mechanic charged with maintaining these fragile aircraft. He also flew with the planes as an observer with a standard issue Lee Enfield rifle as his weapon. There were no parachutes aboard.

Flight was in it's infant stages and the British would pile on warm clothes and smear their face with whale oil or engine grease to block the cold wind. Allingham wrote of these flights, "To be honest, all the planes were so flimsy and unpredictable....At the start of the war both British and German pilots would immediately turn back rather than face each other in the sky of they did not enjoy height supremacy. But I remember getting back on the ground and just itching to take off again."

But while all these stories of his war years are interesting, to me what is more interesting is how his story came to be heard. He had returned from the war, married and raised a family, a survivor of the war determined to live a good life. He worked in the Ford Automobile plant and retired. His wife died in 1970 and by 2001 he was wasting away in a nursing home, no purpose in life but to exist.

And then he met a nursing home inspector, Dennis Goodwin, who felt that Allinghams story was an important one and that Allingham's generation was also not getting the care they needed to address the trauma's they had received in war, both World War 1 and World War 2.

Many veterans wanted to return to those battlefields and soon Goodwin began organizing trips to France with veterans in tow. At 100 years old, Allingham went abroad and began to share his experiences in the war, began talking to reporters and school groups. He began leading military parades and even received France's Medal of Honor. He met Queen Elizabeth and began to write his autobiography.

In his last years he wrote these inspiring words.

"I think we need to make people aware that a few men gave all they had to give so that you could have a better world to live in," he said. "We have to pray it never happens again."

War is a terrible thing. We do not honor war, but the simple men and women like Henry Allingham who serve their country. I find no honour in remembering war, but I find the life of Henry Allingham to have been honorable and worthy of remembrance.

Resources:

Huffington Post

Times Online

Telegraph