So soon after the death of Henry Allingham, Harry Patch, the last known surviving Tommy of the Great War has died. RIP to a great man - the last of the generation of truly great Britons. I was almost in tears while listening to the Radio 4 feature on this extraordinary mans life. Click here to watch a moving tribute from Prince Charles.
2 comments:
"Farewell to the last Tommy"
Rest In Peace
Henry John "Harry" Patch (17 June 1898 – 25 July 2009) — known as 'the Last Fighting Tommy' — was a British supercentenarian, briefly the oldest man in Europe and the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War. Patch was, with Claude Choules, one of the last two surviving British veterans of the First World War, and along with Frank Buckles and John Babcock, one of the last four worldwide. He was, at the age of 111 years, 38 days, the verified third-oldest man in the world, the oldest man in Europe and one of the 70 oldest men ever. His life spanned six monarchs, twenty prime ministers and three centuries.
Patch was born in Combe Down, a village in Somerset, England. He appears in the 1901 Census as a two-year-old along with his stonemason father William, mother Elizabeth and older brothers George and William at a house called "Fonthill". Patch left school in 1913, and started work as an apprentice plumber in Bath.
In October 1916, he was conscripted as a private into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, serving as an assistant gunner in a Lewis Gun section. Patch arrived in France in June 1917. During his time in France he fought at the Battle of Passchendaele (also known as the Third Battle of Ypres). Patch was injured in the groin when a shell exploded overhead at 22:30 on 22 September 1917, killing three of his comrades. After this he was removed from the front line and returned to England on 23 December 1917. Patch referred to 22 September as his personal Remembrance Day. He was convalescing on the Isle of Wight when the Armistice was declared.
After the war, Patch returned to work as a plumber, during which time he spent four years working on the Wills Memorial Building in Bristol, before becoming manager of the plumbing company’s branch in Bristol. Too old to fight during the Second World War, he became a part-time fireman in Bath, dealing with the Baedeker raids. Later in the war he moved to Street, Somerset where he ran a plumbing company until his retirement at age 65.
In 1918, Patch married Ada Billington, who died in 1976. They had two sons both of whom predeceased him, Dennis who died in 1984 and Roy who died in 2002. At age 81 he married his second wife, Jean, who died in 1984. His third partner, Doris, who lived in the same nursing home as him, died in 2007.
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