The last of the British survivors of the WW1 trenches passes on

[Iain]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8168691.stm

The last British survivor of the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, has died at the age of 111.

Mr Patch was conscripted into the Army aged 18 and fought in the Battle of Passchendaele at Ypres in 1917 in which more than 70,000 British soldiers died.

He was raised in Coombe Down, near Bath, and had been living at a care home in Wells, Somerset.

The oldest British World War I veteran is now Claude Choules who is aged 108 and lives in Australia.

Henry Allingham, who served in the Royal Navy and the RAF in WWI, died at the age of 113 a week ago.

Mr Patch's biographer Richard Emden said he passed away at 0850 BST on Saturday morning.

A statement from the Fletcher House care home said: "It is with much sadness that we must announce the death of Mr Harry Patch on 25 July at the age of 111.

"Funeral arrangements are being made in accordance with Mr Patch's wishes, and we wish to extend our deepest sympathies to his family, friends and the residents and staff of Fletcher House."

Mr Patch served as a private at the Third Battle of Ypres - known as Passchendaele - from June to September 1917 when he was seriously injured by a shell explosion which killed three of his friends.

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I was thinking the other day, what was the life expectancy when these guys were born circa 1900? And then their life expectancy as they walked on to the front lines between 1914 and 1918? And they live more than a decade past their centenary year. Beat some odds there.

It'll be soon out of anyones living memory. Amazing that it has taken this long perhaps, but we are poorer for their passing.

[K Frame]

Wow. That's it. WW I has almost passed from human experience into human history...


I don't know what life expectancy was in Britain, but it was probably about the same as in America, and I think it was in the mid to late 1940s around that time.

Their life expectancy when they walked into the trenches? Measured in weeks, probably.

[Stand_watie]

What a hell that war must have been for participants (as if ever there was a nice war).

[Tim L]

Rest in peace and thank you sir.  Imagine all of the changes that have taken place during his lifetime.  When he was born Black powder and steam power were kings and a balloon was the only way to fly.  While he lived automobiles were refined, the airplane progressed from a glider to propeller, jet, and rocket power.   Man has gone from floating a few hundred feet off the ground in a balloon to flying in a glider to traveling to the moon and back to a continuous presence in space.  About the best I can say I will see in my lifetime is the perfection of the low flow toilet.

[LAK]

To think there were some War between the States vets who were alive during WW2. And whereas time passes quickly - WW2 was not really that long ago.

[HankB]

To think there were some War between the States vets who were alive during WW2. And whereas time passes quickly - WW2 was not really that long ago.

My father - a WWII vet - once told me that as a kid, he met an "old man" who'd fought at Gettysburg . . . and a few other old-timers who'd been in the Indian Wars that followed.

[Cromlech]

RIP

I'll never forget these guys, but I expect that over time the significance of the events and participants will be lost to the coming generations.