Bill Young, the last Scottish veteran of the First World War, has died at the age of 107 at his home in Australia.
The war hero served with the Royal Flying Corps during the 1914-1918 war and was held captive by the Japanese in the Second World War. Mr Young died in Perth, Australia, where he had lived since 1945. He was born in Carluke in 1900, the eldest of six children and on his 18th birthday enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps.
The only other remaining British First World War survivors are thought to be Henry Allingham of Brighton, who is Europe's oldest man at 111; Sydney Lucas and Claude Choules, both 106 and living in Australia; Harry Patch, 109, who lives in Somerset and William Stone, 106, from Devon.
After the war Mr Young gained a chemistry degree in London before emigrating to Borneo where he worked as an industrial chemist. He was able to get his wife and son away on a coastal steamer to Darwin in Australia before the Japanese invasion but stayed behind to sabotage his works and help the fight against the Japanese. He was interned by the Japanese in February 1942 and spent a month in solitary confinement for refusing to help them. He remained in a Japanese prisoner of war camp until it was liberated by the Australian troops in 1945.
He lived quietly in Australia until his death and hardly spoke about his long and eventful life. He was awarded the Legion d'honneur by France in 1998 in recognition of his service there.
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