The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: twyacht on July 25, 2009, 04:58:55 PM
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There is only a handful left as time marches on. Britain's Last WWI Veteran Harry Patch, died at 111 years old.
What a life he has seen.
His autobiography, The Last Fighting Tommy, written with Richard van Emden, was published in 2007.
RIP and God Speed..
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Harry-Patch-Britains-Last-World-War-I-Veteran-Dies-At-Age-Of-111-A-Week-After-Henry-Allingham/Article/200907415346129?lpos=UK_News_Carousel_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15346129_Harry_Patch%2C_Britains_Last_World_War_I_Veteran%2C_Dies_At_Age_Of_111%2C_A_Week_After_Henry_Allingham
4:26pm UK, Saturday July 25, 2009
The Queen has paid tribute to Harry Patch, the last surviving British soldier to fight in the First World War, who has died at the age of 111.
Her Majesty said: "We will never forget the bravery and enormous sacrifice of his generation."
Mr Patch had been unwell for some time and passed away peacefully in his bed at the Fletcher House care home in Somerset.
Chief executive of Somerset Care, Andrew Larpent, said Mr Patch's friends and family were there when the veteran "quietly slipped away".
He added: "It was how he would have wanted it, without having to be moved to hospitals but here, peacefully with his friends and carers."
Mr Patch was the last surviving First World War veteran to have fought in the trenches.
A machine-gunner in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, he fought during the Battle of Passchendaele, in Ypres, which claimed the lives of more than 70,000 soldiers.
He served in the trenches as a private from June to September 1917, surviving a shell attack which killed three of his comrades.
More at article site..
70,000 casualties.... Incredible for any battle. More incredible for a generation that lived through it.
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Wow, thanks TW.
The changes that man lived through.
A survivor of bloody trench warfare and he lived to 111 to boot. God Bless and RIP. An era ends.
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Good man laid to rest. 8)
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RIP
this leaves Aussie veteran Claude Choules ( 108 Years old ) as the last person to have seen active service in World War One.
"The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
how true.....
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I don't want to take away from the reverence of this thread, but I'd like to point out that he had a name that would have been good in adult movies.
…heading to the corner.