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from Manchester Evening
News, Monday November 8, 1999
 Marching
on at 101, true hero recalls his days of hell
BY PAUL BROSTER
ARNOLD Howe was 16
when the order came to go over the top and face the German foe.
He braved bullets in
no man's land, looked on as his pals fell under enemy fire and
cheated death in a mustard gas attack which left him blind.
But Arnold survived
and now, at the age of 101, he is one of only a handful of old soldiers
alive in Britain who served throughout the First World War. Eighty-five
years ago the teenager, filled with patriotism, lied about his age to
volunteer in Buxton for action in the battlefields of France and Belgium.
Within weeks he was knee-deep in mud in rain-soaked front line trenches at
Ypres as German shells exploded around him. Working as a messenger,
ferrying information from trench to trench and line to line, he ventured
above the parapet into the killing fields every day.
One night he took his
gas mask off to find his way and -was engulfed by fumes which burned his
lungs and left him blind for months.
After struggling to
safety, he was sent back to Britain to recover in a military hospital.
He demanded to be sent
back to fight alongside his mates.
But within days the
war had been won and Arnold went home to Disley, near Stockport, to
continue a colourful life which started during the reign of Queen Victoria
in 1898.
Today he puts his good
health and continued eloquence down to the good food he gets at home from
daughter Vera - and regular halves of mild when he pops down to his local,
The White Horse. But this afternoon his thoughts were once again turning
to the poppy fields of France - and those pals - as the last Remembrance
Day of the century approached.
He is believed to be
the only surviving member of his regiment, the Nottinghamshire and
Derbyshire Sherwood Foresters, who served throughout the 1914-18 war.
"We must never
forget the lads who gave their lives," he said.
"There were
terrible moments but I don't regret anything - the war had to be won.
Arnold, who has won a
£300 grant from Macclesfield council to travel to the Imperial War Museum
in London, added: "I love my life. I've still got my health and not
many men can say they have lived through three centuries, two world wars
and more kings and queens than I can remember."
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