RomanArmyTalk

[url:3a466it7]http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/jul/18/obituary-henry-allingham[/url]

He was the (officially) oldest man on Earth, aged 113, ald also the oldest Navy and RAF veteran, being also a founder of the latest (April 1918). He flew over Jutland and Ypres.

Today, the Great War falls bit more in the past, as you won´t hear one voice telling you how it was seeing it from above. When 2014 comes, I doubt there will be any survivors still alive to tell us about that. We´ll have only the books, the letters...and photographs.

Sad yes. Time stands still for no man, and it is perhaps truely just that a man who gave so much in such a generation shattering conflict, should have been blessed with such a long life.
We have sadly, as a species, yet to truely learn the lessons that these people were here to give us in their lifetimes.

I suppose that I should be very proud indeed to have followed in the foot steps of such a wonderfull man for when I was in the Royal Air Force I helped to reform 12 Squadron when it took on the Buccaneer Bomber.
Then of course the last of three Buccaneer Squadrons that I was with was the Black Saints or 16 Squadron that was originaly formed at Saint Omer in 1916.
The one between these two was an Operational Conversion Unit 237 OCU that was both Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm combined, and very much like Dear Henry Allingham I began my service in the Royal Air Force as an aircraft instrument mechanic.

I admire and salute a very great Gentleman.