Somebody's gotta be last

It's an inspiration for Rico to write his intended short story about the last Vietnam veteran (hey, it's coming; those guys are getting old, if you figure even the last guy has to be well over 55 now), but Adam Martin has an article in The Atlantic about the last veteran from World War One:

A British woman who served with the Royal Air Force for the last two months of World War One was the last known veteran of the war when she died in her sleep recently. Florence Green joined the RAF at the age of seventeen and died just before her 111th birthday, which would have been on 19 February of this year. She had been a mess steward with the RAF, the BBC reported, serving in two British air bases after she joined up on 13 September 1918. The Allies signed the armistice with Germany on 11 November 1918. Green follows Claude Choules, a Royal Navy sailor who was the last World War One combatant before he died in May of 2011, and Frank Buckles, the last American veteran of the war, who died in February of 2011. All were 110 years old.

Rico says he has no idea how all these folks lived so long, given when they were born. Amazing...