Chief Petty Officer Claude Choules

CLAUDE CHOULES

Claude Stanley Choules was born at Pershore, Worcestershire on March 3, 1901. Dying at the age of 110, he was the last surviving British veteran of the First World War. Told of the death of 111-year old Harry Patch, Britain’s last soldier who fought in the Great War’s infamous trenches (Obituary 27 July 2009) and that he was the last survivor, Choules remarked “Everything comes to those who wait and wait”. His daughter Mrs Anne Pow said her father had always said war was mostly very tedious punctuated by moments of extreme danger. She attributed her father’s longevity to healthy eating and plenty of exercise, adding that he must have had ‘pretty good genes’.
Claude had two brothers who had settled in Perth, Australia, prior to the war and were already soldiers fighting in France and at Gallipoli when, aged 13, he tried to enlist in the British army but was turned away as much too young. Determined to serve King and Country, he joined the navy as a Boy Seaman aged 14 and after a period in the training ship Impregnable at Devonport, went to the battleship Revenge. Newly built, Revenge had recently taken part in the battle of Jutland in May 1916, undamaged and without casualties. Choules’ war service was uneventful as further excursions by the German High Seas Fleet were few and feeble and did not challenge the might of the British Grand Fleet and its supremacy in modern ‘Dreadnought’ battleships.
Choules was on board when the Grand Fleet in all its disciplined power departed its base to meet the battered and mutinous German High Seas Fleet off Scapa Flow and accept its surrender. In order to witness the event, King George V, Queen Mary and Edward, Prince of Wales.visited the battlecruiser Lion, the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief, David Beatty, and Revenge, the flagship of the second-in-command. Queen Mary took tea in Revenge.
He was also to witness a further historic event when at Scapa Flow, Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, disturbed at the way that the Versailles peace negotiations were going and concerned that his fleet would be ignominiously traded off or scrapped, issued the order to the interned German High Seas Fleet to scuttle all 74 ships. After the success of this dramatic move which he had had prepared for some time in advance, von Reuter was brought to the quarterdeck of Revenge, flagship of Admiral Fremantle and accused of breaching naval honour. Von Reuter replied to the accusation, “I am convinced that any English naval officer, placed as I was, would have acted in the same way.” Although vilified in Britain and made a prisoner of war, Reuter became a hero in Germany.
In 1924, now a Petty Officer, Choules went to Australia and served on the staff of Flinders Naval Depot. After two years he decided to transfer permanently to the Royal Australian Navy, persuaded by the attractions of the Australian way of life, and saw sea service in the cruisers Canberra and Australia. He then took a discharge from the RAN in 1932 but re-joined a year later, being awarded his Long Service and Good Conduct Medal in December 1935 – with a gratuity of £8 – and a clasp in 1950. His efficiency was annually rated ‘Superior’ throughout his service from 1926 to 1948.
Between the wars, Choules specialised in underwater warfare and was promoted Chief Petty Officer Torpedo and Anti-Submarine Instructor or TASI, a breed of man that rivalled even the famed naval Gunnery Instructor in professionalism and reputation and who, besides anti-submarine warfare, were also practical experts in mine warfare and demolition by explosives.
During the Second World War he was appointed the acting Torpedo Officer of the port of Fremantle, responsible for the placement and supervision of demolition charges around the harbour installations and oil storage tanks that were to be activated in the event of a Japanese invasion. He was also responsible for making safe or detonating mines that had come ashore on the coasts of Western Australia and clearing wartime debris as far north as Broome, which had been attacked by Japanese aircraft in March 1942.
After the war he transferred to the Naval Dockyard Police where the later retirement age allowed him to remain in service until 1956.
His many jobs thereafter included cray fishing and kangaroo culling. He was a keen hunter and loved going shooting with the “ocker Aussie bushman” who lived next door to the family home.
He had met his wife-to-be, Ethel, on the six week steamer voyage to Australia when he was on loan from the Royal Navy. She died in 2003, their marriage spanning 70 years, leaving behind three children, eleven grandchildren and twenty-one great-grandchildren. One of his grandchildren is the prize-winning and much exhibited painter Lindsay Pow.

Claude Choules, naval rating, was born on March 3, 1901.
He died on May 4 aged 110