In the summer of 1918, Domenico Chiarello was posted with his regiment from Calabria, the “toe” of Italy, to the foothills of the Julian Alps, where the armies of Austria-Hungary were encamped. Ninety years later he was to be the last survivor of the subsequent Italian push for victory.

Chiarello had been called up earlier that year at the age of 19, and after three months training as an infantryman joined the 19th Regiment at Cosenza. The previous autumn Italy had been shattered by defeat at Caporetto, in which its armies had lost 300,000 men. Their headlong retreat provided Ernest Hemingway with his inspiration for A Farewell to Arms.

Under new military leadership, the Italians had held the line of the Piave River, and when Chiarello arrived at the front they were preparing for their successful counter-offensive there in June 1918. This success, followed by that at Vittorio Veneto in October, thrust the Austrians beyond the Alps, determined the northern frontiers of Italy and led to the downfall of the Habsburgs.

Before this, however, Chiarello had been transferred to Albania, the southern half of which had been occupied by Italy and where he soon contracted malaria. After recovering, he was stationed for two more years in Montenegro. After demobilisation he returned to Calabria, where he married and for many years ran a livestock farm.

Francesco Domenico Chiarello was born in 1898. Calabria, then as now, was among the poorest regions of the recently unified Italy, and his two brothers and two sisters all emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s.

He was conscripted for service a second time when war broke out again for Italians in 1940, but was soon discharged on account of his age.

Recently he had become the oldest living Italian, and prescribed for a long life a daily glass of good red wine and, in summer, an ice-cream during the afternoon.

Italy’s last survivor of the Great War is now Delfino Borroni, who is also 109.

Domenico Chiarello, Italian veteran of the First World War, was born on November 5, 1898. He died on June 27, 2008, aged 109