Florence Green, 110, last known WWI vet
LONDON - Florence Green never saw the front line. Her war was spent serving food, not dodging bullets. But Ms. Green, who died Saturday at 110, was the last known surviving veteran of World War I. She was serving with the Women's Royal Air Force as a waitress at an air base in eastern England when the war ended Nov. 11, 1918.
LONDON - Florence Green never saw the front line. Her war was spent serving food, not dodging bullets.
But Ms. Green, who died Saturday at 110, was the last known surviving veteran of World War I. She was serving with the Women's Royal Air Force as a waitress at an air base in eastern England when the war ended Nov. 11, 1918.
It was not until 2010 that she was officially recognized as a veteran after a researcher found her service record in Britain's National Archives.
Ms. Green died at the Briar House Care Home in King's Lynn, eastern England, two weeks before her 111th birthday, the home said.
Retired Air Vice Marshal Peter Dye, director-general of the RAF Museum, said it was fitting that the last survivor of the first global war was someone who had served on the home front.
"In a way, that the last veteran should be a lady and someone who served on the home front is something that reminds me that warfare is not confined to the trenches," Dye said.
She was born Florence Beatrice Patterson in London on Feb. 19, 1901, and joined the newly formed Women's Royal Air Force in September 1918 at the age of 17.
The service trained women to work as mechanics, drivers, and in other jobs to free men for frontline duty. Ms. Green went to work as a steward in the officers' mess, first at the Narborough airdrome and then at RAF Marham in eastern England.
After the war she stayed in the area, raising three children with her husband, Walter Green, who died in 1970.
Once her service record was rediscovered, the RAF embraced the centenarian veteran, marking her 110th birthday in February 2011 with a cake.
Asked what it was like to be 110, she said: "It's not much different to being 109."
The last known soldier to have fought in the trench warfare that has become the enduring image of the conflict was Britain's Harry Patch, who died in 2009 at age 111.
The last U.S. veteran of the conflict was Frank Buckles of Charles Town, W. Va., who drove ambulances in France. He died last February.
The war's last known combatant, Royal Navy veteran Claude Choules, died in Australia in May.
There are no known French or German veterans of the war left alive.