The last of the noblest generation

[IndianaGreen]

The last of the noblest generation

Harry Patch died yesterday aged 111. He was the nation's final living link to the horrors of the Western Front. David Randall, the last journalist to meet Private Patch, reports

Sunday, 26 July 2009


In memoriam: Harry Patch in 2007: 'I didn't want to fight anyone.' He first started talking
of his wartime experiences only after he reached his 100th birthday

Harry Patch, the last survivor of the Western Front, and the man who reminded the modern world of its filthy slaughter, died yesterday at the age of 111.

His life ended on a fine summer's morning in his native Somerset, many miles and 92 years from the Passchendaele mud where so many of his comrades fell, and where he, but for the aim of a German artillery officer, so nearly joined them. For decades he kept the sights and sounds of that butcher's yard to himself. But then, beginning at the age of 100, he began to talk of them. In so doing, he became the very voice of history: the last Tommy, still fighting. But now, his campaign is over.

As the news of Harry's death filtered out from his residential home in Wells, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, paid tribute, not only to Harry, but to all the men who fought beside him. "The noblest of all generations has left us," he said. "But they will never be forgotten. We say today with still greater force, 'We will remember them'."

We must, for with this death, and that of Henry Allingham earlier this month, the Britons who thought they were fighting the war to end all wars have now gone. There will, at the Cenotaph this autumn, be empty places.

And not just for the two First World War veterans who had become so familiar to us. Harry Patch was not the only British soldier to die yesterday. Fifty years before Harry was born there were British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. They were there when he was discharged from the army in 1919, and yesterday, on the day that he died, they were still there. And, as Harry's life concluded, came the news that a far younger one who wore the British army uniform died on the same day. Not in his bed, surrounded by friends and those who cared for him, but on a dusty road in a country that has defied, for generations, all efforts to subdue it in the name of civilisation and politically justified armed force.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-last-of-the-noblest-generation-1761467.html

[imdjh]

1. Amazing.

[Naturyl]

2. Sounds like he was an insightful man.

"Harry Patch had words for an occasion like this – indeed, for all such conflicts. They were spoken with a soreness that lasted all his adult life. "War," he said, "is organised murder, and nothing else."

[Captain Hilts]

3. Love the poppies in the photograph. The 'Great' War sucked for all who fought in it.

Too many folks had fun in WWII - the ratio of support to combat was ten to one - and then they got paid off with the GI Bill. WWI vets had none of that.

[Cid_B]

4. I think thats the first time I ever heard the words...

"fun" and "WWII" used together like that.

[ohio_88]

5. Fun

Two of my Brother-in-laws served in WWII.  One was a truck
driver delivering ammo and fuel from the rear area to tanks on
the front line in the European Theater.  The other was a
combat infantryman in the Pacific Theater.  

Both are gone now, but neither ever mentioned having fun.