Training | 2009.06.20
UK veteran oldest man in the world at 113
Death of Japanese titleholder puts Britain\'s Henry Allingham into the record books
At the age of 113 Henry Allingham, the oldest surviving veteran of the first world war, has officially been proclaimed the oldest man alive by Guinness World Records, after the death today of Tomoji Tanabe in Japan.
His friend Denis Goodwin, a founder of the First World War Veterans Association, who has escorted Allingham to innumerable parades, memorial services and presentations, said: "It\'s staggering. He will take it in his stride, like he does everything else. He withdraws in himself and he chews it over like he does all the things he has done in his life. That\'s his secret, I think."
At St Dunstan\'s home for blind ex-service personnel, near Brighton, where Allingham has lived since he finally gave up his Eastbourne flat at the age of 110, chief executive Robert Leader sent sympathy to the family of Tanabe, who died in his sleep, also aged 113. He added: "We are proud to be caring for such a remarkable man. He has just celebrated his 113th birthday, and knowing Henry as I do, he will take the news in his stride."
It is the latest in a series of recent landmarks in the extraordinarily ordinary life of a man who remembers watching WG Grace playing cricket, returned from the hell of the trenches to marriage, and had a long contented career as an engineer. He never spoke of his wartime experiences for most of the 20th century until he was asked to give some talks to school children.
Allingham is the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, the last surviving founding member of the Royal Air Force, the last survivor of the Royal Naval Air Service, and the oldest ever surviving member of any of the British armed forces.
As an engineer on a Sopwith Schneider seaplane, he recalls shells bouncing across the waves in the Battle of Jutland, and he was behind the lines in training and support units at the Western Front in 1917.
Despite an apparently blameless life, he attributes his longevity to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women – and a sense of humour". On his 110th birthday, when he was already the oldest man in Britain, his presents included enough whisky to swim in, including a bottle personally presented by Gordon Brown.
He was awarded France\'s highest honour, the Légion d\'honneur in 2003 as a chevalier, upgraded earlier this year to officier.
In the last decade he has joined hundreds of ceremonies marking major anniversaries of the first world war. He joined the march past the Cenotaph every year until 2005. The following year\'s parade was the first without any veterans of the first world war. But Allingham was not tucked up at home. He was laying a wreath in France.
An honour which particularly pleased him came last December, when the Institute of Mechanical Engineers presented him with an honorary award as Chartered Engineer and he has since also been awarded an honorary doctorate from Southampton Solent University. Despite a lifetime working in aviation and car engineering – he finally retired from Ford in Dagenham in 1960 – he had no formal qualifications.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/19/briton-becomes-worlds-oldest-man
