BRITAIN'S last surviving First World War veteran will didn't mark Remembrance Sunday - because he has become a pacifist.

Claude Choules, 109, from Wyre Piddle, near Pershore, is the only man left who saw active service in both world wars.

Now living in Perth, Australia, his family has revealed that he has no interest in marking the anniversary of the end of the First World War on November 11, 1918.

Son Adrian Choules, 75, said: "He used to say that while he was serving in the war he was trained to hate the enemy, but later he really grew to understand that they were just young blokes the same as him.

"He said wars were planned by old men and fought by young men, and that they were a stupid waste of time and energy.

"As he has got older he has become more and more anti-war."

Claude's daughter, Daphne Edinger, 82, said the rest of the family would not be marking the day either.

"If Dad wants to forget, we're quite happy to forget it as well," she said.

Since leaving the Navy in 1956 Claude Choules has refused to march in Anzac Day parades in his adopted home of Australia, and has become increasingly pacifist.

The veteran, who lives in a nursing home in Western Australia, is too frail to walk and has lost his sight and hearing.

His health has deteriorated over the last year and Mrs Daphne said that her father was now "not well at all".

The siblings said they wanted Mr Choules to be remembered as a dedicated seaman, a "sensitive, understanding" family man and, despite 41 years of service in the armed forces, a pacifist who strongly opposed war.

After the death of Harry Patch in 2009, Claude became the only known surviving British combatant in the First World War. He is the only remaining witness to the surrender of the German fleet in 1918, and the scuttling of the their ships at Scapa Flow.

A demolition expert during the Second World War, he was entrusted with giving the signal to sink the local fleet if the Japanese entered Fremantle Harbour.

Born in 1901 in Wyre Piddle, Worcestershire, he is the only man left in the world who saw active service in both world wars and, after emigrating to Perth in 1926, is believed to be Australia's oldest man.

Claude, who was still walking and swimming daily at the age of 100, and only moved into a nursing home when he was 105, is no longer as active as he once was. Daphne believes that her father is on "a downward spiral".

He now spends most of his time in bed in a bright room on the first floor of the neat, modern nursing home in Perth's southern suburbs.

His children believe that he was blessed with extremely hardy genes and helped by the fact that he has lived an active life.

"Two years ago, I went to see him and he was sleeping," said son Adrian. "I tried to wake him up but I couldn't.

"I thought he must have died. So I felt for his pulse and there it was pounding away boom, boom, boom. I felt it would go on and on forever."