NI's last Great War veteran dies

Thomas Shaw joins ranks of NI's dead war veterans

Northern Ireland's last World War I veteran has died in County Down aged 102.

Thomas Shaw, from Belfast, joined the 16th battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles in 1916.

He first enlisted as a rifleman at 15 and went into battle, but was sent home after his brother, a military policeman, met him by chance while in France.

As the Battle of the Somme - in which thousands of soldiers from the Ulster Division died - was ending, Mr Shaw joined up again and was posted to France.

Thomas Shaw fought in Messines, Ypres, and Passchendaele

He fought in battles at Messines, Ypres, and Passchendaele and stayed in Germany as part of the Army of Occupation after the war ended.

He returned home in April 1919. During World War II he was in charge of meat rations in Belfast.

Mr Shaw married his girlfriend Nell in 1942. They spent the last 12 years living at sheltered accommodation in Bangor, County Down.

He had been the last surviving combatant of the Great War living in the whole island of Ireland.

Sam Girvan, the manager of the Clanmill Housing Association, which runs the accommodation block where Mr Shaw lived, said the veteran did not like a fuss to be made about his years of service.

Mr Girvan told BBC Radio Ulster: "He was a quiet, unobtrusive man.

The stories he told me about his comrades being blown to pieces and the bodies lying all over the place were horrific

Sam Girvan

"He was very reluctant to speak about the war, but two years ago I spoke to him in depth about the war for the first time and he told me about the horrors of what he experienced in the trenches.

"He was in a pioneer battalion and in the middle of the night he had to go into no-man's-land to put up wire obstacles.

"The stories he told me about his comrades being blown to pieces and the bodies lying all over the place were horrific."

Mr Girvan said the veteran soldier did not attend Remembrance Day events and did not return to France after his years of service.

"Even on the day he turned 100, and we had a big do for him, he didn't want any fuss," he said.

"And about the same time the French were going to honour him with their highest medal, but he even turned that down."

A Royal Irish Regiment officer laid a poppy wreath at Mr Shaw's funeral on Tuesday. The Last Post and the Flowers of the Forest were also played at the funeral. Mr Shaw died last Saturday.

He was buried in Clandeboye cemetery in Bangor.