“People need to know this,” Holly cried, leafing through the moldering, yellowed slips of paper.”

“Hah,” Cecil croaked. “They’ve done just fine not knowing up until now, and they’ll do fine not knowing from here on out.”

“But don’t you see?” Holly continued. “You’re the very last one alive. You have to be! The last known veteran died in 2011, it was in all the papers.”

“I saw that,” Cecil said. “Or I should say that my granddaughter read it to me. Hell of a thing, that, even if he only shot down a zeppelin and watched the Huns sink their own goddamn ships instead of being in the trenches with me, where the action was.”

“Don’t you want anyone to know that?”

“Why, so they can give me a medal? So I’ll get a state funeral with an oration by the bloody Queen? Better men than me fought and died, and better men than me survived and told their stories. I’ll not be caught fumbling after my own little slice of fame just for having the good luck to outlive every bleeding one of ’em!”