youngest widow from the great war?

[dove]

My neighbour is 82 years old, and thinks she is maybe the youngest widow from WW1, can anyone give me any links to find out if she is, or maybe someone knows someone younger?

[dot.hawkes]

my great aunt died last November aged 93, she was born in 1914, WW1 was 1914 - 1918. if she is 82 she was born in about 1925, if yoiu mean ww2, which was 1939-1945, then maybe she is the youngest widow from that war,

[dove]

dot, she is 83 next month, and her husband was 30 years older than her, he was an officer in the first war.

[dot.hawkes]

yes but she wasn;'t alive during the fiest world war, so couldn;t have married during the first world war to be a first world war widow, she would not have been legally able to marry until the 1940s

[B00]

Yeah, but if she's 82 dove it means she wasn't born til 1926, and as we know the first world war ended in 1918.

[dove]

her husband was 30 when she was born, hence him being 30 years older than she. If her husband were alive today he would be 112, thus making him an acceptable age for a ww1 veteran!

[dot.hawkes]

I think I get what your neighbour means, her late husband served during the GREAT WAR, even though he didn;t marry her until alot later, and so she is the widow of a WW1 veteran. I get that now, iff he was 30 years older, many wives of WW1 soldiers would have been of their generation. It sounded like she was saying she lost her hudband during WW1, that would be a WW1 widow.

[B00]

Ahhh, gotcha!

sorry dove, I was thinking the same as dot, that her husband died during the war.

[dove]

maybe I should apologise, he died 20 years ago, not in combat . So she still gets a ww1 pension

[dot.hawkes]

i think to call yourself a WW1 widow, your husband would have to have died during 1914 - 1918,

[dot.hawkes]

No he gets an army widows pension, not specifically a WW1 pension, he must have been regular army then.

[dove]

dot I dont know if you are drunk, but I have already said he was an officer.
and she is a woman not a 'he'
she is a widow as her husband died and he left her his pension, being a serving officer in ww1

[dot.hawkes]

Dove, i am not drunk, I was genuinely trying to establish the facts, just the facts, forgive me a typo, i thought it would have been clearer.

[dove]

sorry all, my neighbour asked me to post this question, and so I did . Am now explaining all your hepful comments . Thanks dot and boo, isnt it good we are all friends again!

[spudqueen]

You might be interested in this dove
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908934.html

[Peter Pedant]

I had realised that she must have married a Tommy from the Great War, post facto sort of.

In the 1780s, someone Beaumarchais or St SImon recorded that one of the old ladies of the court of Louis Seize used to say, 'Comme disait mon premier mari a Louis quatorze...'

And in fact this was possible - Louis XIV dying in 1715 or thereabouts, that as a child of 8 she could have married an old Marshal of France for pension reasons - she would get his pension - when he was MUCH older.


Also the last person to hear Chopin play - he died in 1848 by the way, died in 1936. He died in his nineties and was 5 when he heard him play.

[B00]

All friends again?

I didn't know we'd fallen out..... had we? :-(

[spudqueen]

By my definition someone is a war widow if they receive a war widows pension. And you do not have to die in a war for your widow to qualify for war widows pension, I think she qualifies if you die of something relating to an injury you received in the war. My Auntie lives in a war memorial village and knows people who have qualified for war widows pension in the last couple of years, and they were married to men who fought in WWII.

[Ethel]

I am positive there are women alive who married men more than 30 years their senior - and those men fought in the Great War.

After all, there was a shortage of men after WWI and WWII.