Last WWI veteran dies – How does the media respond?

May 5, 2011 at 3:15 PM | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Claud Choules is dead. He was 110 years old. He was also the last known living combat veteran from World War I.

       Known as “Chuckles” to his friends, he was born in Britain but spent most of his life in Australia, dying at a nursing home in Perth.

Choules joined the Royal Navy in 1916, and a year later was on the HMS Revenge fighting the Germans in the North Sea. He witnessed the German fleet’s surrender at the end of the war. He continued his career in the military, helping Australia’s ports build their defenses against the Japanese in World War II.

I found his story from this article on the BBC’s website. The BBC provided the two pictures you see above, plus a video obituary, where we learn that he liked to fly in airplanes. They provide a brief summary of his life, describing how he became a pacifist in his later years.

I became interested in his story because my 100-year-old great-grandmother recently died after two years in a nursing home, and so I have been feeling a sort of empathy for the elderly. I began looking across the Web for more information about the man. The Associated Press did a video obituary of their own:

From their report, I learned that Choules was only 14 years old when he enlisted in the Royal Navy, and that he remembered the first automobile passing through his hometown. I also liked that their video provides a soundbyte from one of his grandchildren.

CNN did a photo slideshow on their site, showing more pictures of him as a young man, like this one:

The CNN article tended to focus more on his career after the First World War, while the BBC article tended to focus on his service during the war. I’m not sure why the difference in emphasis.

MSNBC’s article was far more text than anything, containing only two photos and no video. It did, however, have several lines of text highlighted. When you hover over them with your mouse, a little window pops up showing the Google search results for those words. It also talked about Choules’ autobiography, “Last of the Last”, and mentioned his brief stay in South Africa.

Lastly, I checked out the website of The West Australian, since he lived most of his life in Western Australia and died in Perth. This article was a huge disappointment. It only had one image, no links, and a huge block of plain text. It wasn’t even a locally-produced report; it used a wire service article on the man and his life that placed quotes from the Australian Defense Department and Prime Minister near the top. It seemed almost inhuman. It did, at least, mention one fact the other articles seemed to neglect: by the time he died, he was virtually blind and deaf.

I am left with a portrait of a man who lived a long, eventful life, but like all people who get up there in age, such as my great-grandmother, the last years were marked by failing health and the haunting knowledge that any day his time would come. And it finally has.

Claude Choules, 1901-2011