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25-07-2009 02:02 PM |
Harry Patch dies aged 111
Harry Patch, Britain's last surviving World War I veteran, has died in a care home at the age of 111.
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He had been unwell for some time and passed away peacefully in his bed at Fletcher House 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 WWI veteran after Henry Allingham died a week ago and Bill Stone passed away earlier this year.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown paid tribute, saying: "I had the honour of meeting Harry, and I share his family's grief at the passing of a great man.
"I know that the whole nation will unite today to honour the memory, and to take pride in the generation that fought the Great War.
"The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten.
"We say today with still greater force: 'We will remember them'."
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.
Born on June 17 1898, Mr Patch grew up in Combe Down, near Bath, and left school at the age of 15 to train as a plumber.
He was 16 when war broke out and reached 18 as conscription was being introduced and after six months training he was sent to the frontline.
Mr Patch later described war as "organised murder" and said: "It was not worth it, it was not worth one let alone all the millions.
"It's important that we remember the war dead on both sides of the line - the Germans suffered the same as we did."
Mr Patch was too old to fight in the Second World War but became a maintenance manager at a US Army camp in Somerset and joined the Auxiliary Fire Service in Bath.
After the war he went back to plumbing and retired in 1963.
Mr Patch was married to his first wife, Ada, for almost 60 years until her death in 1976 and had two sons, Dennis and Roy, both of whom died before him.
At 81, he married his second wife, Jean, who died five years ago while his third partner Doris died last year.
Mr Patch only came to the spotlight as one of the last veterans of the Great War during celebrations for his 100th birthday.
His autobiography, The Last Fighting Tommy, written with Richard van Emden, was published in 2007.
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