THE last Australian veteran to see active service in the First World War has died, aged 106.

William Evan Allan, who was born two years before the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy at the outbreak of the war when he was just 14. Nearly 30 years later he served in the Second World War.

The former sailor, who died on Monday in a Melbourne nursing home, will be honoured with a state funeral, government officials confirmed. “With Mr Allan’s passing, we have lost an entire generation who left Australia to defend our nation, the British Empire and other nations in the cause of freedom and democracy,” said De-Anne Kelly, the Veterans’ Affairs Minister. “(He) was just a young boy when he went to war, much younger than most. His sacrifice is remembered and we honour him for his service.”

John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, paid tribute to Mr Allan, calling him an “extraordinary cohort of a remarkable generation of Australians”.

Mr Allan was born in the New South Wales town of Bega in July 1899 and served as a seaman on HMAS Encounter from 1915 to 1918, sailing in the Pacific and Indian oceans, escorting troop ship convoys.

His ship also assisted in the hunt for the German raider, Wolf. He was posted to England before the end of the war to join Britain’s Grand Fleet. He remained in the navy for 33 years, serving in Australia and Papua New Guinea during the Second World War and climbing to the rank of lieutenant before retiring in 1947 to enjoy life with his family on a small farm in Somerville, Victoria.

Andrew Robertshaw, of the National Army Museum in London, said that Mr Allan would almost certainly have had to lie about his age to enlist for service, aided by the lack of birth records available at the time. “The concept of a teenager did not really exist then,” Mr Robertshaw said.

“Boys were leaving school aged 12 to 14 so he wouldn’t have seen himself as a teenager; you were either a boy or a man. Younger boys were traditionally sent to sea; it was a good way to learn the ropes as the level of danger and hardship was not considered as great.”

In old age, Mr Allan was able to recall vividly his war years, including surviving the post-Great War Spanish flu epidemic and helping to curb anti-Japanese riots in Singapore.

The veteran’s death leaves just one Australian Great War serviceman still alive, John Campbell Ross. However, Mr Ross, who is also 106, enlisted in 1918 but never saw active service. More than 400,000 Australians enlisted to serve in the Great War, with 330,770 of them going overseas.

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