WWI Veteran Dies at 111
by admin on Jul.27, 2009, under Historical Heroes
This past Saturday, the last British WWI veteran, Harry Patch, passed away at the full age of 111. This marks the end of an era for the country, but not the end of the memories. France and Germany have both lost all their remaining veterans, and the U.S. still has Frank Buckles, 108, as their last known WWI veteran.
Harry Patch was a young apprentice plumber when war broke out and was called into service in 1916. He didn’t agree with war and was reluctant to go.
Born in southwest England in 1898, Mr. Patch was a teenage apprentice plumber when he was called up for military service in 1916. After training, he was sent to the trenches as a machine-gunner in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry.
The five-man Lewis gun team had a pact to try not to kill any enemy soldiers, but to aim at their legs unless it came down to killing or being killed, he said.
Mr. Patch was part of the third battle of Ypres in Belgium. The offensive began on July 31, 1917, and it rained all but three days of August. It was not until Nov. 6, 1917, that British and Canadian forces had progressed five miles to capture what was left of the village of Passchendaele. The cost was 325,000 Allied casualties and 260,000 Germans.
Mr. Patch’s war had ended on Sept. 22, when he was seriously wounded by shrapnel, which killed three other members of his machine-gun team.
“My reaction was terrible; it was losing a part of my life,” he said.
After losing the majority of his team, Patch was taken to a hospital, where he had to have the shrapnel removed from his body without the aid of anesthesia. He and the other machine gun team survivor both agreed never to share the details of their comrades deaths with the families. For them it was too horrible to share.
World War I was a brutal and grisly event – a dark time in world history. The advent of new weapons technology meant that the killing could be done with horrific efficiency. It was war in a way that no one ever dreamed of being possible. This post is in memory of, not only Harry Patch, but all the brave soldiers who endured hell in the trenches.
Click here to read the entire article about Harry Patch. Defininely read it.
