Trav's Thoughts

Florence Beatrice Green (nee Patterson) of Great Britain, the last known veteran of World War I, has died.  She was 110.

She deserved better of me.  I did not see the announcement of her death two months ago.  I frequently searched on her name, and I simply missed that she had died.  The passing of the last person under military service in WWI requires commemoration.

Ms Green was 17 when she joined the Women's Royal Air Force, serving from 1918 through the end of the war as an officers' mess steward at RAF Marham and at Narborough airfield in the UK.

Ms Green was married for 55 years, until the death of her husband Walter Green in 1975.  On her birthday in 2011, someone asked what it felt like to be 110.  She said, "Not much different to being 109".

She sounds like a real pip.

I say again as I have said before, it is the nature of time that they leave us.  I make the choice granted me by liberty and freedom to remember their service and sacrifice, and to honor it always.

Peace to you, Ms Green.  You earned it.