May 10, 2011

Vale Claude Choules

Claude Choules served in the Royal Navy in WWI and in the Royal Australian Navy in WWII.

In his later years he became a staunch pacifist and eschewed Anzac Day and Remembrance Day celebrations, thereby refusing to glorify war.

He was the oldest living British combat veteran of WWI when he passed away on May 5, 2011.

The conservative mainstream media, such as Murdoch's News Limited, when reporting on his passing, by and large "forgot" to mention his anti-war stance.  Similarly, the Royal Australian Navy's "biography" of Chief Petty Officer Claude Stanley Choules also omits to mention his intense aversion to the glorification of war.