The Last Soldier

Geoffrey Albert Vickery was born in Meerut, India, on the last day of 1915. Four years later he was orphaned.

Like his elder brother Harry, Geof grew up inside the military system that had shaped his family. He trained in India and at Woolwich, joined the Royal Artillery and later served through the Western Desert campaign.

His war carried him through Tobruk and El Alamein, then back to Britain before his unit went ashore in Normandy after D-Day. In 1945 he encountered a different kind of battlefield: the aftermath of Belsen, where British troops faced disease, mass death and the task of clearing a concentration camp.

Geof rarely spoke about any of it. His albums, letters and later family memories do the speaking instead. The quietest member of the family became its last soldier - and one of its deepest witnesses.