[wordup] Last British survivor from the World War I trenches

[Adam Shand]

I saw this quote at the end of David's email and looked it up.  It's a  
great quote and a good story.

"It wasn't worth it." -- Harry Patch

Adam.

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Via: David Nicol <davidnicol at gmail...>
Source: http://www.lastingtribute.co.uk/tribute/patch/2814079

Last British survivor from the World War I trenches
Harry Patch, who died on 25 July, 2009, aged 111, was the last of the  
Tommies who fought for Britain in the First World War.

Mr Patch served as a gunner in the trenches of the Western Front and  
took part in the disastrous Battle of Passchendaele before being  
wounded.

During the Second World War he was a fireman in Bristol.

He spoke little of his experiences in World War I until his 100th  
birthday, but as one of the longest-surviving veterans in the world he  
became a valuable historical source.

"Millions of men came to fight in this war," he said. "I find it  
incredible that I am the only one left."

The Royal family led the tributes to Harry after his death. The Queen  
said: "We will never forget the bravery and enormous sacrifice of his  
generation, which will continue to serve as an example to us all."

A Clarence House spokesman said "The Prince of Wales is saddened to  
hear of Harry Patch's death. He was the last of a remarkable  
generation whose selfless sacrifice for this country should never be  
forgotten."

Henry John Patch was born on 17 June, 1898, making him the UK's oldest  
person at the time of his death. Before the war he worked as a plumber  
in Bath.

He was 16 when the war broke out and in 1917 he was conscripted into  
the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. Private Patch was made an  
assistant gunner in a section operating Lewis machine guns.

The Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres,  
lasted just over three months and saw over 580,000 deaths, 325,000 on  
the Allied side. In terrible conditions the Tommies battled against,  
not only the Germans, but rain, mud, disease and vermin, all for a  
gain of only five miles. It was the last of numerous large scale  
military catastrophes of the war.

"If any man tells you he went into the front line and he wasn't scared  
- he's a liar," Harry once said. "You were scared from the moment you  
got there. You never knew. I mean, in the trench you were all right.  
If you kept down, a sniper couldn't get you. But you knew that if the  
artillery had a shell that burst above you and you caught the  
shrapnel, that was it."

Siegfried Sassoon described Passchendaele as Hell. Similarly Harry  
Patch said that he "lost all my faith in the Church of England" when  
he went over the top. He saw wounded men lying in the mud, crying for  
help that could not be given - after falling into a trench he held the  
hand one of one dying man as he whispered his last word: "Mother". The  
experience haunted his dreams for the whole of his life.

He left the front after being wounded in the leg by shrapnel. "You  
didn't know you were hit," he said. "You never heard the bullet or the  
shell that hit you. All I can remember was a flash, I went down, blew  
me down ? next thing I found I was in a dressing station."

After the war he resumed work as a plumber. For many years his  
experiences in Flanders were too painful to talk about - he wouldn't  
even speak to his wife about it. He broke his silence at the turn of  
the century, appearing in several documentaries about the war. In 2004  
he returned to Passchendaele and met German veteran Charles Kuentz  
there. In 2007 he published an autobiography, The Last Fighting Tommy,  
which made him one of the oldest authors of all time. He spent his  
last years in a nursing home in Somerset.

His honours included the British War medal and the Victory Medal (the  
'Mutt and Jeff' pair), the British Legion's National Service Medal,  
the Hors de combat awarded to wounded soldiers and the L?gion  
d'Honneur, France's highest military award.

"It wasn't worth it," he said of the First World War. "No war is worth  
it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives, let alone thousands."

No one will ever speak with the same authority as Harry Patch again.

His death comes just one week after the death of the world's oldest  
man and WWI veteranHenry Allingham , who served in the Royal Navy and  
the RAF, who died at the age of 113.