William Parkes

William Parkes, the last surviving member of Britain's Royal Welch Fusiliers who saw battle during World War I, has died in California. He was 106.

Parkes died Oct. 7 in Napa, where he had lived for 70 years.

In 2000, Parkes joined other World War I veterans in receiving the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, which had been authorized by the French government two years earlier to honor Allies and to mark the 80th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice, which ended the Great War on Nov. 11, 1918.

Gerard Coste, the French consul general in San Francisco, pinned the green and white medal on Parkes as he sat in his wheelchair in Napa on Dec. 14, 2000. A representative of the Fusiliers also presented Parkes with a Royal Welch Fusiliers Millennium Plate for his historic service to the military unit.

Born in Newport, Monmouthshire, England, on Jan. 18, 1896, Parkes was the fifth of 11 children and outlived all the rest.

He enlisted at age 19 with the 12th Battalion of the 24th Regiment of the South Wales Borderers, a unit of the Fusiliers, and was trained as a machine gunner and combat infantryman. Sgt. Parkes fought in the trenches in Belgium and France, and was wounded, his leg shredded by shrapnel.

"Wrap it up, wrap it up tight, I gotta get back in there," he told a medical corpsman. The leg, however, collapsed when Parkes tried to stand, and his fighting was over.

The slightly built soldier - 5-foot-5, 140 pounds - specialized in what he called "reconnoitering."

- Los Angeles Times