Albert Coss, who died on March 15th, at the age of 100, was one of the last survivors in Ireland of the first World War. He served, from the age of 15, in the trenches during some of its worst episodes.
According to the Somme Association in Belfast, only one other soldier survives the first World War. Thomas Shaw, also 100 years of age, still lives with his wife in Bangor, Co Down.
A redoubtable lady of 105, who lives in Holywood, Co Down is another survivor. She has shunned publicity but it is believed she may have served as a nurse at the same field hospital near Ypres where the war poet, John McCrae served as a surgeon. It was McCrae's observation of the wild poppies flowering in the soil upturned by the bombardment at Ypres in May 1915 that gave the world the symbol that has come to record the first World War and the desire to see an end to such human conflict.
While McCrae was composing his poem In Flanders Fields with its opening lines:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; the 15-year-old Albert Coss was serving in the trenches at Arras.
He joined a service regiment in the King's Royal Rifles after lying about his age. He recollected seeing a military recruitment poster while working as a message boy in his home town of Leeds.
"I went across town for this message and on the way back I saw them going and Kitchener pointing. And, I thought: have a go, Joe. I didn't give a damn about anything."
After basic training at Winchester, the King's Royal Rifles' headquarters, he went for three months military training at a camp somewhere in England and then on to France in May 1915.
Speaking to The Irish Times just before his 99th birthday last year, Albert Coss recollected: "We went to Etaples. That is where everybody went and you were drafted out of there. I was drafted with the 13th battalion to Arras. I was there for a year."
He described the trenches as "terrible". But added: "You got used to them. But you never knew when you were going to slip into a shell-hole full of water. I was there for part of the summer and part of the winter. The winter was terrible. But there were dug-outs where you could get a cup of tea or go in for a rest. Otherwise you were out on the firing step all the time." During the spring offensives of 1915 poisonous chlorine gas was used in the trenches for the first time. He had difficulty recollecting other experiences after that first autumn and winter at Arras.
The rest of the war was a blur. "I don't know anything about it except I was there all the time. I moved about a couple of places but I don't know where they were."
According to the director of the Somme Association, Billy Ervine, this memory loss was not uncommon among soldiers who served at the front. Many who served as teenage soldiers must simply have blanked out their experiences from their memories.
Albert Coss remained in the army until 1921 when he returned to Leeds as an apprentice tailor, eventually opening his own shop. He first visited Ireland in 1926 when he travelled to see his brother who had settled in Belfast during the war.
The city then had a thriving Jewish community, centred around the north of the city and the synagogue in Annesley Street, off Carlisle Circus. In Belfast he met and became engaged to Millie Leopold, one of a family of eight whose parents ran a garment factory in Donegall St. The engagement lasted seven years before he sold up in Leeds and moved to Belfast where he went to work in his wife's family firm.
During the second World War Albert Coss was too old to enlist and joined the Home Guard unit on the Cliftonville Road.
He again encountered the horrors of war when the city was bombed by the Luftwaffe during Easter 1941. The north of the city was severely damaged with many hundreds of civilian losses.
When the clothing business fell into a slump in the mid-1950s Albert Coss, his wife and their daughter Rose moved to Dublin where he worked for another garment company on the quays. They settled in a flat in Kenilworth Road where the family enjoyed the company of neighbours who grew to be close friends. They only moved from their flat in 1997 after a series of break-ins. There were three burglaries in two months.
The couple then moved to the Jewish Home of Ireland in Rathmines.
In January last year, Albert Coss was presented with the Legion d'honneur by the French ambassador to Ireland, Mr Henri de Coignac at a ceremony in the Jewish home. Four other veterans of the trenches were also presented with the Legion d'honneur last year in the North. All four - William Calvert who was 101, Thomas McDowell (100), James Burns (99) and James Taylor (99) - have also since died.
Albert Coss is survived by his wife Millie and daughter, Rose.
Albert Coss: born 1900; died March, 2000.