Britain's oldest man, 110, visits school to share WWI memories
It started out as an enterprising school project and ended up as a living history lesson. When pupils in Tamworth [Staffordshire], wrote a series of letters to war veterans, Britain's oldest man Henry Allingham offered to answer their questions about World War I face-to-face. [Rajesh Mirchandani of] the BBC observed how the generation gap was bridged and two of the pupils reveal what they learned.
...What Henry does care about is trying to give young people a flavour of his incredible memories.
And he certainly managed that at Wilnecote High School in Tamworth.
I was quite surprised to see the group of around 40 pupils aged 13 and 14 quite so enthralled by the words of a man nearly a century older.
But they were fascinated by his tales of giving two small German children a Christmas gift of two Jaffa oranges."They were not gold-dust then," he said."They were platinum dust."
The students also enjoyed hearing how a young Henry used to chat up women in his uniform. We never found out if it worked.
But it was when one young girl asked what he most remembered about World War I that Henry painted his most vivid picture.
He told us how he had fallen into a rain-filled shell hole one night.
"Dead rats in that shell hole, human flesh, all rotting, who knows what in there...it was terrible," he said.
What textbook could give you that kind of details?
Read entire article at BBC News
...What Henry does care about is trying to give young people a flavour of his incredible memories.
And he certainly managed that at Wilnecote High School in Tamworth.
I was quite surprised to see the group of around 40 pupils aged 13 and 14 quite so enthralled by the words of a man nearly a century older.
But they were fascinated by his tales of giving two small German children a Christmas gift of two Jaffa oranges."They were not gold-dust then," he said."They were platinum dust."
The students also enjoyed hearing how a young Henry used to chat up women in his uniform. We never found out if it worked.
But it was when one young girl asked what he most remembered about World War I that Henry painted his most vivid picture.
He told us how he had fallen into a rain-filled shell hole one night.
"Dead rats in that shell hole, human flesh, all rotting, who knows what in there...it was terrible," he said.
What textbook could give you that kind of details?