Percy Goring, 106; Last Known British Gallipoli Veteran
Percy Goring, 106, the last known British survivor of the World War I Allied landings on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula, died Friday at a nursing home in Bunbury, south of the Western Australia state capital, Perth.
The former army engineer was formally recognized last year as the last British Gallipoli veteran by the British Gallipoli Veterans Assn.
Goring was among British army engineers sent to help the joint Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, known as Anzacs, in its mission to knock the German-allied Ottoman Empire out of the war.
The campaign was supposed to take 11 days, but Turkish forces held strong for more than eight months, until the Allies retreated Dec. 20, 1915.
Goring was born at Shoreditch, East London, on Dec. 19, 1894, and enlisted in 1915. After World War I, he returned to England and his family’s millinery business.
He moved to Australia in 1948, undertaking various jobs before settling in Darkan, southeast of Perth, where he and his wife ran a farm.
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