Editorial: The generation of veterans who fought in World War Two is passing on

​​A man thought to be the last Royal Navy veteran of the Dunkirk operation has died aged 102. Lawrence Churcher, who was born in Portsmouth, was days short of his 103rd birthday

It doesn't seem that long since the last veteran of the Great War died aged more than 110, a decade or so ago. Now the last survivors of the 1939-45 world war are also coming to the end of their lives.

The youngest such veterans would have been born around the beginning of 1927, turning 18 in the final months of that terrible violence. And even they, the very youngest cohort of men who fought in the two world wars, would be approaching the age of 97.

Two consecutive generations were, in the prime of their lives, plunged into the disaster of those global conflicts. When all the veterans have passed on, there will still be tens of millions of people around the world who were children in World War Two and remember it well.

The Dunkirk evacuation has a special place in British memories. In a sense it was a failure, because the army was retreating back to England, yet it was a vital success in saving those forces from being apprehended and kept out of the fighting.

The UK was in a bad enough situation as it was, by then resisting Hitler almost alone. Later that stand would be vindicated by the defeat of the Nazis.

Northern Ireland played a key part in both world wars. In the first, many volunteers went to the trenches and paid the ultimate sacrifice. In the second, there was another batch of NI volunteers, but the province was also a key strategic base.

The people who served between 1914 and 1918 and between 1939 and 1945 will be remembered for many, many decades to come, here and around the world.