By MARGALIT FOX
Published: February 7, 2012
Senior Aircraftman Chris Hill/British Ministry of Defence, via Associated Press
Florence Green received a cake from the Royal Air Force for her 109th
birthday in February 2010. Mrs. Green joined the Women's Royal Air
Force in 1918, toward the end of World War I.
Florence Green, a member of Britain's Royal Air Force who was afraid
of flying, died in England on Saturday, two weeks shy of her 111th
birthday. She was believed to have been the war's last living veteran
— the last anywhere of the tens of millions who served.
Mrs. Green, who joined the R.A.F. as a teenager shortly before war's
end, worked in an officer's mess on the home front. Her service was
officially recognized only in 2010, after a researcher unearthed her
records in Britain's National Archives.
That Mrs. Green went unrecognized for so long owes partly to the fact
that she served under her maiden name, Florence Patterson, and partly
to the fact that she conducted herself, by all accounts, with proper
British restraint, rarely if ever flaunting her service.
It also owes to the fact that her life followed the prescribed
trajectory for women of her era: by the time the 20th century had run
its course, Mrs. Green had long since disappeared into marriage,
motherhood and contented anonymity.
With the death in May of Claude Stanley Choules, an Englishman who
served aboard a Royal Navy battleship, Mrs. Green became the last
known person, male or female, to have served in the war on either
side.
Her death, at a nursing home in King's Lynn, in eastern England, was
announced on the Web site of the Order of the First World War, an
organization based in Florida that keeps track of veterans.
In the spate of interviews she gave after her existence was
discovered, Mrs. Green expressed quiet pride in her service. She also
recalled approvingly the courtly behavior of the officers she served.
"It was very pleasant, and they were lovely," she once told an
interviewer. "Not a bit of bother."
But though she was aware of her historical position as the war's last
veteran, Mrs. Green was philosophical about the war itself, one of the
defining events of modern history, in which more than 20 million
people died.
"It seems," she remarked to The Independent last year, on the occasion
of her 110th birthday, "like such a long time ago now."
The daughter of Frederick Patterson and the former Sarah Neal,
Florence Beatrice Patterson was born in London on Feb. 19, 1901, and
moved to King's Lynn as child.
In September 1918, two months before the war ended, Florence, then 17,
joined the Women's Royal Air Force. An auxiliary branch of the R.A.F.,
it had been created not long before to help free men for combat duty
by recruiting women to work as mechanics and drivers and in other
noncombat jobs.
Made a steward in the officers' mess, she was assigned first to the
Narborough Aerodrome and later to the R.A.F. base at Marham, both in
England's Norfolk region.
She served the officers meals and tea, and in free moments she would
roam the base, admiring the men. "I met dozens of pilots and would go
on dates," Mrs. Green told The Daily Mail in 2010.
But when they offered to take her aloft in their craft — Sopwith
Camels and other biplanes — she demurred. She was afraid to fly.
At Marham, Mrs. Green witnessed what was undoubtedly the most benign
bombing of the war. On Nov. 11, 1918, when armistice was declared, the
Marham fliers celebrated by swooping down on the Narborough airfield,
a few miles away, and letting loose bags of flour. The Narborough boys
quickly retaliated by pelting Marham with bags of soot.
Mrs. Green, who remained in the Women's R.A.F. until July 1919,
married Walter Green in 1920. Mr. Green, a railway porter, died in the
1970s.
Her survivors include two daughters, May and June; a son, Bob; four
grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
Mrs. Green's wartime experience remained unsung until 2009, when an
English newspaper, The Lynn News and Advertiser, wrote about her 108th
birthday. Andrew Holmes, a British researcher for the Gerontology
Research Group, an American organization that keeps statistics on
people who live well past 100, then located her service records in the
National Archives, resulting in Mrs. Green's recognition as a veteran
the next year.
At her funeral next week, The Associated Press reported, the Union
Jack will drape the coffin.
Richard Goldstein contributed reporting.
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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