Alfred ANDERSON

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  General Notes:

Last surviving veteran of the 1914 Christmas truce, and a witness to the horrors of war on the western front.

Alfred Anderson, who has died at the age of 109, was the last of the Old Contemptibles, the soldiers who took their nickname from Kaiser Wilhelm II's dismissal of the 'contemptible little army' that left Britain for France in 1914 at the start of the first world war. He was also the last survivor of that year's unofficial Christmas truce on the western front, the last of the prewar Territorials and the oldest man in Scotland.

Earlier this month, Alfred appeared to great effect in the BBC documentary The Last Tommy, almost 91 years after he crossed to France on November 13 1914. On camera, he was, in turn, relaxed, articulate, humorous and sad. He was a true star, and his death reduces the number of surviving veterans from the first world war to a tiny handful.

Born in Dundee, he had an early memory of soldiers returning from the Boer war carrying him shoulder-high down the street. When he was six, his family moved to Newtyle in Angus, where his father bought a joinery and undertaking business. After attending his local primary school and the Harris Academy, Dundee, he became apprenticed, aged 14, in his father's business.

In 1912 he decided to join the Territorial army, mainly because, as he used to reminisce, it gave him the chance of an annual holiday. His third such camp took place at Crieff in July 1914. Once war broke out, his TA battalion, the 5th Black Watch, mainly recruited from Angus, was called up. After a brief period of training, they were sent to the front. Like so many young recruits - being under 19, he was technically a "boy soldier" - Alfred had no thought of death. He was simply seeking adventure.

They were soon disillusioned. Alfred spent 18 months in the trenches without any leave. He suggested that, having got used to seeing bodies while working with his father, he was perhaps more able to cope with the daily presence of death than other young soldiers. He thus became batman to his platoon commander, Lieutenant Ian Bruce-Gardyne, and briefly to Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother's brother. He survived the battle of Loos in 1915, a terrible episode of slaughter for the Black Watch, when Bowes-Lyon lost his life.

Brave under fire and with a cool head, Alfred was often sent out with Bruce-Gardyne to listen for signs of tunnelling or other enemy activities. In the spring of 1916, as he was completing such a duty, a shell burst overhead, seriously wounding him with shrapnel and killing several other soldiers. Alfred waited all day in a dugout for attention; it was not until nightfall that a stretcher party could take him to a dressing station.

He was invalided back to England, and eventually went to the infantry training camp at Ripon, north Yorkshire, as an instructor. While there, he married Susanna 'Susie' Iddison. At the end of the war, he was asked to stay on as a sergeant major, but, to his disappointment, he was needed back in Newtyle to help with his father's business, both his elder brothers having emigrated to Canada.

He never went abroad again, and never flew in a plane. He spent the rest of his life in the joinery business and, during the second world war, organised the Home Guard of Newtyle. He was chairman of the local Royal British Legion, secretary of the local branch of the Scottish Rural Workers' Society and active in the Boy Scouts, the ATC and the local Scottish country dance society.

He gave up his business in 1956 to work for several local authorities as a property assessor and clerk of works, finally retiring in 1975, aged 79. After he was widowed in 1979, he went to live near a daughter and son-in-law in Alyth, where he became a celebrated local figure, much involved in the community and physically active almost until his death. Along with several other veterans, he received the Légion d'Honneur in 1998 and was much feted by his old regiment. In September 2002, he was visited by Prince Charles, who was fascinated by his experiences. They met again at the inauguration of the Queen Mother memorial gates at Balhousie Castle, Perth, where generals and other high-ranking officers honoured Alfred as their oldest veteran.

Charming, courteous and mentally alert to the end, he had a considerable sense of humour, but never ceased to worry about the threat of war. He once said that wars were always about money and power, but that it was the ordinary folk who paid the price. Near the end, he said to me that he was often depressed and lonely, and wondered what it was all for. "I think my purpose has been to bring people together." The remark was typical of his thoughtfulness - and he was right.

He is survived by two daughters and two sons, 10 grandchildren, 18 great grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. One daughter predeceased him.

· Alfred Anderson, soldier and joiner, born June 25 1896; died November 21 2005