French WW1 veteran Ferdinand Gilson posing for a photograph in his old uniform and a wartime photograph, March 2003.

Ferdinand Gilson was born in Champigny-sur-Marne near Paris on October 20, 1898 to a Belgian mother and a French father of British ancestry. When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Gilson was only a 15-year-old boy, and was working in Paris as an apprentice in a German-owned mechanic shop, where he learned some German from his boss.

On April 16, 1917, still aged just 18, Gilson was conscripted into the French Army with the 115th Infantry Regiment: "I think it was a Monday. With four Parisian comrades, I took the train at Montparnasse station. During the trip, we already suffered two losses, two guys who climbed on the roof of a wagon and who were decapitated through a tunnel."

However, Gilson developed flatfeet and was deemed unfit for the long marches of the infantry, instead being transferred to an Artillery Regiment. Due to his young age and modest height of 163 cm, his comrades nicknamed him, roughly translated, 'the crab louse'.

As an artilleryman, in March 1918 Gilson received his baptism of fire on the frontlines of Flanders at Mount Kemmel, on which a bloody battle would soon ensue in the Battle of the Lys in April 1918 - the second phase of the German Spring Offensive.

Gilson would go on to see combat in 1918 on the Aisne and the Somme, during which he was gassed twice and lost part of his left lung, and was seriously wounded in the knee from a shell. However, Gilson claims not to have known fear: "At 18½ you don't think about all that. My only fear was seeing one of my comrades fall. I immediately thought of the death notice his mother would receive."

Gilson survived the war, and even the Spanish Flu, which he contracted shortly after. After the war, Gilson opened his own mechanic shop and married a female employee in the 1930s.

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In 1940, during the Nazi occupation of France in WW2, aged 42, Gilson became a French resistance fighter by using his German to extract information out of of German officers visiting his shop and passing it on to Allied intelligence. He was arrested twice by the Gestapo, but got off both times by playing 'dumb as a carp'.

His intel aided the Allied air forces with conducting targeted air attacks on locations of German significance, and, following the liberation of France, his contribution was awarded with a diploma of recognition from U.S. General Eisenhower.

As the years went on, Gilson devoted himself to raising awareness of the reality of war to younger generations, having many a conversation with younger compatriots: "Those who know only peace must understand how lucky they are to live in a free country. With the Germans, we fought so much that our blood is one."

Ferdinand Gilson passed away peacefully on February 26, 2006, aged 107, as the 6th last living French WW1 veteran.

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