William Stone would have lost count of the number of times he had heard Last Post sounded, from the funerals of old comrades to the Remembrance Sunday parades he attended as one of the last surviving veterans of the First World War. Yesterday, finally, it was played for him.

In an Oxfordshire churchyard, more than 90 years after Mr Stone joined the Royal Navy in the closing months of the war, a bugler stood under an ancient yew and sounded the refrain he knew so well. Then, when the notes had died away, the church bell tolled, 108 times — once for every year of his life.

Mr Stone joined the Navy as a stoker but there can be few former stokers whose funerals have been graced by the presence of a Vice-Admiral, a Commodore and a Lord Lieutenant. Mr Stone was more than just a former stoker, however. He came to symbolise the sacrifice of a generation, and by the time that he, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch were Britain’s last surviving veterans of the war, they were seen as a precious but fragile link with the past.

The last time all three were seen together was in November at the 90th anniversary of the Armistice at the Cenotaph. Now only Mr Allingham, 112, and Mr Patch, 110, are left.

The last surviving Briton to have served in two world wars, Mr Stone joined the Navy in September 1918, and served on a variety of ships including HMS Hood (long before her encounter with the Bismarck). He helped with the evacuation at Dunkirk, carried out minesweeping operations from Murmansk and was serving as chief petty officer on HMS Newfoundland when she was torpedoed during the invasion of Sicily. In all, his naval career lasted 27 years, and his funeral was everything an old tar could have wished for. Indeed, there may well be naval officers with far more distinguished careers who did not have a send-off such as this. In attendance was Vice-Admiral Sir Barry Wilson, of the HMS Newfoundland Association, Air Vice-Marshal Barry Newton, of the Not Forgotten Association, and the Lord Lieutenant for Oxfordshire to represent the Duchess of Gloucester, who is patron of the World War One Veterans’ Association. The guard of honour outside St Leonard’s Church in Watlington were standard bearers from the veterans’ associations, old men in blazers bedecked with medals who lined the path as the coffin, draped in the Union Flag, was brought into the church.

Mr Stone’s medals, eight of them, including the Atlantic Star and a medal for the Second World War with oak leaf, gained after being mentioned in dispatches, were carried on a blue velvet cushion.

The mourners were led by his daughter, Anne Davidson, who said her father “would have been truly delighted. He had an amazingly long and happy life.”

Meanwhile in Devon, the funeral of Marine Travis Mackin, 22, from Plymouth, was being held at St Andrew’s Church in the city. Marine Mackin was killed on patrol in Kajaki in northern Helmand province on January 11, leading his team in a joint operation between 45 Commando Group Royal Marines and Afghan troops to destroy a Taleban command cell. His mother, Debbie Mackin, said her son would be “in our hearts and minds forever”.

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