ww1 vets

urqh · #1 (**permalink**) July 21st, 2003, 08:04 PM

Just for information.

Jack Davis, believed to be Britain's oldest World War I veteran, has died at the age of 108, his son said Monday. Ken Davis said his father, who served with the 6th Battalion Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry, ``just peacefully drifted away'' at a nursing home at Stoke Hammond, England, on Sunday.

He joined the army at the age of 19, seeing active service in France and Belgium, including the battle at Ypres in July 1917 which claimed a quarter of a million lives on all sides.

Davis went with the 6th Battalion in 1915 to Ypres, where German forces used poison gas for the first time, said Dennis Goodwin of the World War One Veterans Association.

Davis was sent home with trench fever the following year, Goodwin said, but was back with his battalion at Ypres in 1917.

``This war was the most disgusting and humiliating experience a man could suffer,'' Davis told an interviewer recently. ``I remember there were days we did not have a change of clothes and we had rats running around us.''

Despite his age and increasing frailty, Davis was delighted earlier this year to meet Prince Charles, the commander-in-chief of his old regiment.

The pair chatted at Kew Gardens in west London in April at a reunion organized by the World War One Veterans Association, which now has just 34 members. It said Davis had been the oldest British survivor from the 1914-18 conflict.

``The prince of Wales felt incredibly honored to meet Mr. Davis and very much enjoyed talking to him about his life,'' a spokesman for Charles said Monday.

Ken Davis said his father had been looking foward to attending a garden party at Buckingham Palace this week. ``When I said he might meet (Queen Elizabeth II) he said `Yes, I will go as long as the weather is fine,''' the son said.

Davis is survived by his son, five grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren. Funeral details were not immediately announced.