Finally at peace

HE LIVED through the bloodiest battles of the bloodiest war mankind has ever seen.

And for every day of the remainder of his 111 years of life, Harry Patch relived the horror of the stinking trenches and the hell of the battlefield.

Yesterday Britain's last surviving Tommy of World War I died in peace - still hating to his last breath the futility of war, which he branded organised murder.

Brave Harry once said of our soldiers' nightmare: "We lived by the hour. You saw the sun rise, hopefully you'd see it set. If you saw it set, you hoped you'd see it rise."

For Private Patch, who passed away in his sleep at his Somerset care home, the sun will rise no more.

His death comes just seven days after his 113-year-old WW1 pal Henry Allingham died - leaving Harry as the oldest man in Europe. He had been "very sad at losing a friend".

Harry, a former Lewis gunner of C Company, 7th Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, was so scarred by his experiences of war that he was 100 before he began to tell his stories of battle. Even then, there were some too painful ever to be recalled.

Darkest

At Passchendaele in 1917 - the darkest, fiercest encounter of the Great War - he went over the top for the first time.

The 19-year-old was immediately met by a Cornish soldier lying in No-Man's Land, torn apart by German gunfire.

It was a sight that would haunt the rest of his dreams.

"Shoot me," pleaded the half-dead soldier as young Harry approached. Then he died with the word "Mother" playing on his lips, in a tone of wonderment that Harry would never forget.

Seconds later, an enemy soldier rushed out of the fog, his bayonet pointing straight at Harry's heart.

"What should I do?" Harry recalled in his book, The Last Fighting Tommy. "That Cornishman's 'mother' was ringing in my ears and I thought, 'No, I can't kill him,' and I gave him his life.

"I shot him above the ankle and above the knee and brought him down."

For as long as he served in the Army that was the rule he lived by: Bring the enemy down but spare their lives.

Harry Patch never, as far as he knew, killed a man.

It was this kind of gallantry that brought a torrent of tributes yesterday, led by the Queen. She said: "We will never forget the bravery and enormous sacrifice of Harry's generation."

Prince Charles also paid his respects, along with Tory leader David Cameron and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The PM said: "I had the honour of meeting Harry, and I share his family's grief.

"The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten."

Three noble men in particular were never forgotten by Harry.

They were his closest comrades killed when a German shell exploded over their heads on September 22, 1917.

Harry was also hit by shrapnel as he crouched for cover in the waterlogged trench. Looking down, he saw a rip in his uniform and blood flowing from a tear in his gut. Harry - born June 17, 1898 in Bath - returned to Britain and recovered in a hospital in Liverpool before moving to Sutton Coldfield.

It was there he met his first wife Ada. They married in 1919 and were together until her death in 1976. They had two sons, Dennis and Roy, both of whom Harry outlived. Too old to fight in World War II, he became a maintenance manager at an Army camp in Somerset and joined the Auxiliary Fire Service in Bath.

In 1999 he received the Legion D'Honneur medal, awarded by the French government to 350 surviving World War I veterans. He dedicated it to his three fallen comrades.

In 2003 Harry visited the Belgian farmland near Ypres where they fell. He planned to lay a wreath, but couldn't bring himself to do it. "I looked from the window and I wept," he said. "Anyone who tells you he wasn't scared, he's a damned liar. War is organised murder, nothing else."

His last visit was in 2008, for the unveiling of a memorial. Its inscription reads: "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. The last surviving veteran to have served in the trenches of the Western Front."

THE Queen will lead tributes to WWI veterans at a Westminster Abbey service being planned for the autumn.

This article has 1 comment