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