Ilie Ciocanthe oldest World War II veteran, died at age 112 in Romania. He was also the second oldest man on the entire planet, according to superlongevity records. In his country, however, they defended him as number one on that list.
Ciocan was born on June 10, 1913 in Galicea, Romania. He witnessed the First World War, in which his country initially declared itself neutral and then joined the Triple Entente. With the fall of the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russian Empire, Romania added territories such as Transylvania.
If the last throes of the war remained imprinted in his memory like flashes of childhood, it was the death of his father, at the age of 6, and his mother, at the age of 12, that began to mark him in days immersed in poverty.
The Second War, however, was felt firsthand. Ciocan was part of the Army of the Kingdom of Romania, which after another stage of neutrality in 1940 became part of the Axis, led by Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Japan.
Ciocan was part of the 6th Pitesti Artillery Regiment. In 1941 he was sent to the front. He was 27 years old. He was a gunner and messenger between the battery and the battlefield, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the Don Front, in Russia. They carried food and also artillery. Were horseback riding of up to a day and a half.
That memory was what marked him throughout his life and made him the most famous among the 3,200 inhabitants of Galicea. Until this Wednesday, May 27, when his family and the mayor confirmed his death.
«I spent four years at the front, as an artilleryman, but I never killed anyone. I remember shooting down an enemy plane while everyone was shooting with machine guns. I thought that if I was going to die, I would die anyway,» he recalled four years ago in the Romanian newspaper truth.
«I fought on both fronts, but the bullets avoided me. The horse saved me from death many times. He was faithful; Every time he went to get ammunition, he neighed and shook his head. It was as if he made the sign of the cross… three times. It seemed like he was praying, that he was praying that nothing bad would happen to us,» added that medium, which reconstructed those years with Ciocan’s memories.
He claimed that he always carried a rifle, but that he had never shot another person.
Ciocan was a member of the super-long-lived club. In addition to being the oldest World War II veteran, he was the oldest Romanian in the records of that country’s entire history. And, according to surveys, he was the second oldest person on the planet, only behind the Brazilian João Marinho Neto.
This Friday, Neto is 113 years and 236 days old. When he died, Ciocan was 112 years and 351 days old. However, that was in dispute: in Romania they claimed that their more than centenarian population had documents that proved their exact age and that, on the other hand, Neto’s information could not yet be verified.
First or second on the list, his longevity attracted attention and was under the analysis of management scholars, while he spent his last years in the care of his grandchildren. I ate healthy. When he became a centenarian, he lost his teeth and had to maintain a diet of minced meat and juicy fruits and vegetables.
He remained very active until he was 90 years old. Until that age he rode a bicycle, a means of transportation he used for decades to get to and from his job. After the war, he worked in the Directorate of Routes and Bridges. Those first years after the war were very hard: he was fed alfalfa soup. He was also a fisherman and worked in the mountains.
His family remembered that faith helped him stay in good health. At 103 years old he was still reading the Bible without glasses. Although then darkness began. In recent years he only recognized shadows and identified his loved ones by touch. «Touching our clothes and our faces,» said one granddaughter.
In addition to the problems of views, they were separated from them by several generations and several worlds away.
