LIKE the opening bar of Beethoven’s Fifth, the 11 o’clock chime of Big Ben rings deep in our history. It is the bell of war, of armistice, of remembrance.
As its sonorous toll rippled the hot, still London air yesterday morning, four very old men with a combined age of 421 years lined up by the Cenotaph, the empty tomb that is the nation’s principal memorial to the fallen. Each man was older by at least two decades than the monument itself.
And each was himself a monument, a miraculous survivor, not only of old age, but of a distant war that claimed 31 million dead, wounded or missing, one tenth of them British.
Because of its treaty obligation to defend Belgium, Britain entered the First World War at 11 o’clock on the evening of August 4, 1914. No matter that yesterday’s modest 90th anniversary commemoration was 12 hours early; old soldiers were kept out of their beds often enough when the heat was on.
Membership of the British First World War Veterans’ Association stands now at a mere 23; there may be a few others out there who have escaped the net, but they will not be many. The four drawn up before the Cenotaph yesterday were the last quartet still able to travel.
A crowd of several hundred applauded warmly as, each with his escort of serving officers, they were led to their positions in the middle of Whitehall. First of three in wheelchairswas Private Jack Oborne, 104, from Porthcawl, South Wales. Then Private Fred Lloyd, 106, from Uckfield, East Sussex. Third was the oldest of all, First Mechanic Henry Allingham, 108, from Eastbourne, spruce in his crimson bow tie.
And last, resting on the arm of a naval officer, but still on his own two feet at a month short of 104, Chief Petty Officer William Stone from Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, the only known survivor of both world wars, who fought on until 1945. Hard-won medals glinted on ancient breasts.
As the eleventh stroke of Big Ben died on the sultry air, Staff Sergeant Tony Morris, Royal Artillery, bugled the Last Post and Reveille, with a minute’s silence between. How often have these men heard those notes? Helped by his naval escort Mr Stone stepped up to the microphone and in a steady voice recited Lawrence Binyon’s exhortation to the fallen. The crowd knew the response and, like a church at prayer, murmured: “We will remember them.” Mr Stone drew hearty applause.
All four approached the Cenotaph. Mr Oborne and Mr Lloyd allowed their escorts to lay their wreaths; with effort, Mr Allingham rose from his wheelchair and placed his with his own hand, casting a brief upward glance at the silent Cenotaph. Mr Stone, too, managed to lay his own, with a little help from his escort. Again the crowd applauded, recognising a great effort of will.
They were followed by the present day wreath-layers: Air Chief Marshal Sir Anthony Bagnall on behalf of the Queen, John Prescott on behalf of the Government and Ivor Caplin, the veterans’ minister, on behalf of the MoD. This time there was no applause.
Watching among the official part of family and friends were Lords Kitchener and Jellicoe, descendants of two of the key military figures in the war to end all wars.
Dennis Goodwin, secretary of the First World War Veterans’ Association, told the gathering that the conflict had changed the face of Europe and the lives of the men who fought in it, and brought sorrow to every hamlet, village, town and city in the land. Britain lost 658,000 dead, 2 million wounded and 359,150 missing.
As he spoke, the banner of the Old Contemptibles hung limp in the still air. When the first British Expeditionary Force crossed the Channel in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed them as “a contemptible little army”.
Mr Allingham and Mr Oborne were wheeled to the microphone again to lead the gathering in the Lord’s Prayer, in voices turning again towards childish treble, but word perfect. Another round of applause from the crowd, and yet another when Mr Stone read In Flanders fields the poppies grow. With only the bugler for accompaniment, veterans and onlookers sang the National Anthem, but it took Pipe Major Rod Allen, of the Irish Guards, to bring a tear to the eye as he struck up that most haunting and familiar of Scottish laments, The Flowers of the Forest.
As the four veterans followed his dying notes off the parade ground on their way to lunch at the MoD, the crowd again broke into applause and cheers, aware that they were watching an historical cameo unlikely to be repeated. The old men were glad to have been there. “It’s brought back a lot of memories I’d like to forget,” Mr Allingham said. “But here I am: it’s my duty to tell of my experiences and the horrors of war.” They’ve always said that to understand the hell of the trenches you had to be there; imagination alone does not stretch that far.
MONUMENTAL COURAGE: SURVIVORS’ STORIES
HENRY ALLINGHAM, 108: joined the Royal Naval Air Service in 1915 as an aircraft mechanic, first class, and witnessed the Battle of Jutland from the deck of HMS Kingfisher. His squadron then moved to the killing fields of the Western Front, at Ypres and the Somme, where he saw fellow aviators burn to death in their shot-down biplanes.
FRED LLOYD, 106: eager to join at the outbreak of war in 1914, he was turned down by his local Sussex regiment for being too short, but was accepted into the Royal Artillery to look after the horses which were still vital to trench warfare. He survived a near-fatal attack of meningitis before he had even reached northern France.
WILLIAM STONE, 103: joined the Navy as a stoker in 1918 and saw no active service but is thought to be the only man alive who served in both World Wars. He was discharged in 1945 as a chief petty officer after 27 years’ service, convinced that his family had a guardian angel: like him, four uncles and three brothers survived service unscathed.
