100th anniversary of the ending of World War One
Just thinking of this man today
Harry Patch was conscripted into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry at the age of 18 in 1916 and was badly wounded in the battle of Passchendaele in 1917. He was the last surviving combat soldier of the First World War and briefly, the oldest man from any country in Europe. In his later years, he spoke about his experiences, and his anti-war, pacifist beliefs.
Harry Patch (Private) Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry
Born 17 June 1898, Combe Down, near Bath, Somerset. Died 25 July 2009, Wells Somerset
'Here, at dawn, on 16 August 1917, the 7th Battalion, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, 20th (Light) Division, crossed the Steenbeek prior to their successful assault on the village on Langemarck. This stone is erected to the memory of fallen comrades, and to honour the courage, sacrifice and passing of the Great War generation. It is the gift of former Private and Lewis Gunner Harry Patch, No. 29295, C Company, 7th DCLI, the last surviving veteran to have served in the trenches of the Western Front.’
By his 19th birthday, Harry was in the water-logged trenches, on the front line of the Ypres Salient. On 16 August the Battle of Langemark, the second assault of the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) commenced and Harry went over the top for the first time. As he and his team advanced across Pilckem Ridge towards Langemark, they passed fallen men and men with horrific wounds. They finally reached a vacated German trench, spent the night listening to the fading cries and screams of the wounded. When they were relieved they were given a rest period before returning in September to the front line. That experience remained with Harry for the rest of his life.
On the night of 22 September 1917, near Langemark in Belgium, a German gun crew fired a shell in into the British lines. Harry had an incredible escape but three other men serving with the Lewis gun team were killed and none of their remains were ever found. Harry was blown off his feet and injured with a shrapnel wound. He was taken to a Casualty Clearing Station where a doctor removed the shrapnel without anaesthetic. He then got shipped back to England to a hospital in Liverpool and then to a convalescent camp at Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham where he met his wife, Ada Billington. After one year's rehabilitation, he was sent to the front in Ypres once again in 1918.
Harry never spoke about the war for 81 years, until a BBC researcher contacted him just after his 100th birthday. His story was told and he returned to Flanders Fields for the first time in 2003. Harry was a witness for all his comrades who fell in the mud of Passchendaele.
The BBC persuaded Harry at 106, to return in the autumn of 2004, for a BBC documentary, The Last Tommy where he was filmed at Tyne Cot, the largest British war cemetery, containing almost 12,000 graves, many of them holding unidentified bodies. At the north east boundary of Tyne Cot, The Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing bears the names of almost 35,000 officers and men whose graves are not known.
On 27 September 2008, in a private ceremony attended by a few people, Patch opened a memorial on the bank of the Steenbeek in Langemark, at the point where he crossed the river in 1917. The memorial reads:
The BBC persuaded Harry at 106, to return in the autumn of 2004, for a BBC documentary, The Last Tommy where he was filmed at Tyne Cot, the largest British war cemetery, containing almost 12,000 graves, many of them holding unidentified bodies. At the north east boundary of Tyne Cot, The Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing bears the names of almost 35,000 officers and men whose graves are not known.
On 27 September 2008, in a private ceremony attended by a few people, Patch opened a memorial on the bank of the Steenbeek in Langemark, at the point where he crossed the river in 1917. The memorial reads:
Patch had refused to discuss his war experiences, until approached in 1998 for the BBC One documentary Veterans, on reflection of which and with the realisation that he was part of a fast dwindling group of veterans of "the war to end all wars".
Patch was featured in the 2003 television series World War 1 in Colour and said "if any man tells you he went over the top and he wasn't scared, he's a damn liar". He reflected on his lost friends and the moment when he came face to face with a German soldier. He recalled the story of Moses descending from Mount Sinai with God's Ten Commandments, including "Thou shalt not kill" and could not bring himself to kill the German. Instead, he shot him in the shoulder, which made the soldier drop his rifle. However, he had to carry on running towards his Lewis Gun, so to proceed, he shot him above the knee and in the ankle. Patch said,
In November 2004, at the age of 106, Patch met Charles Kuentz, a 107-year-old Alsatian veteran, who had fought on the German side at Passchendaele (and served on the French side in World War II).[22] Patch was quoted as saying: "I was a bit doubtful before meeting a German soldier. Herr Kuentz is a very nice gentleman however. He is all for a united Europe and peace – and so am I". Kuentz had brought along a tin of Alsatian biscuits and Patch gave him a bottle of Somerset cider in return.[23] The meeting was featured in a 2005 BBC TV programme The Last Tommy, which told the stories of several of Britain's last World War I veterans.
In December 2004, Patch was given a present of 106 bottles of Patch's Pride Cider, which has been named after him and produced by the Gaymer Cider Company. In the spring of 2005 in an interview which he said of the First World War: "Too many died. War isn't worth one life" and in July 2005, Patch voiced his outrage over plans to build a motorway in northern France over cemeteries of the First World War.
When Harry died in 2009, the theme of his funeral service was "Peace and Reconciliation" and in addition to pallbearers from The Rifles (the successor regiment to the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry), Patch's coffin was accompanied by two private soldiers from each of the armies of Belgium, France and Germany.
In accordance with Patch's instructions, no guns were allowed at the funeral and even the officiating soldiers did not have their ceremonial weapons.
In his autobiography The Last Fighting Tommy, Patch wrote that “politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder.”
An incredible life, Rest in Peace Harry.
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