[WalterBlack]

I'm surprised there's no posts on the 100th anniversary of Armistice...

From the BBC website:

Quote:

Pratap Singh

Pratap Singh, an aristocratic officer of the Jodhpur Lancers, had an incomparable mix of energy, professionalism and charm.

He was 73 years old when he went to war in 1914, becoming the oldest soldier in the British trenches on the western front. But he was still young at heart.

An indefatigable socialite, Singh would take leave of his regiment in France to dine with the powerful and famous - the list included French President Raymond Poincaré, the French Army's Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre, King Albert I of Belgium and the British Royal family.

Singh's two teenage sons, Hanut and Sagat, joined him in the trenches also as officers of the Jodhpur Lancers. He took them with him when the Lancers moved to the Middle East in 1918, and they served together in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine.

Singh's performance was astounding in September 1918 in Palestine at the Battle of Megiddo - the Indian Army's crowning battlefield achievement against the Turks to confirm the Ottoman Empire's downfall.

Aged 74, he stayed in the saddle for 24 hours among charging horsemen on the offensive. Yet this feat proved too much even for him; he had to retire sick.

But within weeks Singh was back on his feet pleading to represent India at the Paris Peace Conference.

"Of all the soldier princes of India, I think I am the only soldier who has stuck to his post at the front throughout the war," he wrote to the King George V to make his case.

The British did not grant him his wish, leaving him to rue the punitive Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany in 1919. "Politically, it was a mistake," he wrote at the time. "I am sure the Germans would not rest without taking revenge some day."