Britain’s oldest WWI veteran is still alive and well. Isaw him interviewed a few days ago and he’s still got all his marbles. He needs a stick to walk, but I think that’s normal if you’re 109.
I’ll take the opportunity of the topical bump to note that Arthur’s book was released in advance of Remembrance Day in the UK and is now available. I haven’t read it, but a flick through it in a bookshop does suggest that it’s the definitive account of how the last few British WWI veterans are dying off and is a record of their memories. A book that, sadly, someone had to write.
While not Churchill, the wife of one World War II leader survived the war by 58 years.
Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, widow of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, was 106 when she died in 2003. She experienced 2 Chinese revolutions, and World War II. Then lived in the US for nearly 30 years after the Generalissimo’s death.
Yes, I remember thinking what an amazing life she’d led when she died! I suppose she acclimatized to things in her life as they happened over 106 years, but my God, what a leap from being born in China in 1893 to dying in New York City in 2003…
I’ll have to dig out the recording of what I thought was the pope; it may have been a bishop, or something similar. I remember it was a member of the Catholic clergy (it was a recording of the person reciting some prayers in Latin).
Well the Queen Mother only died 2 years ago, and she was in every sense a contemporary of Churchill, being the Queen during WWII. So it’s not like it doesn’t happen.