T Tommy rrors of s to until l days

HENDAELE JUST DAYS BEFORE HE DIED AT 111

bid to break the German line. The day resulted in 15,000 casualties but the village of Langemarck, near where a memorial to Harry now stands, was taken. Ten years ago Harry was taken back to the exact spot of the battle.

As a 19-year-old, Pte Patch, of the 7th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, had advanced through shellfire, mud and the bodies of his fallen comrades towards the German lines.

During the 2007 visit Harry said: “It was hellish. Just one long nightmare from the thunder of the guns as the battle began to the sound of the wounded crying out.

“You could do nothing to help them. You just had to go forward through all that mud and blood. It was absolutely sickening.”

Harry became one of the half a million casualties of Passchendaele, wounded by the shell that killed his three best friends. Evacuated to England, he became a plumber and settled in his home county of Somerset. He was widowed twice and survived by two sons.

On his final trip back to the fields of Flanders, he recalled: “This was all mud, mud and more mud, mixed together with blood. We fought for a few yards of this soil – and that cost the lives of most of my comrades. There was no excuse for such slaughter for so little gain.”

Vivid

Richard said: “Harry was so affected by what he witnessed that he did not speak of his wartime experiences for most of his life.

“The memories were just too vivid. Only in his final days did he tell me of the cause of his worst nightmares – clearing the headless corpses in the trenches.”

Richard said he always ques- tioned the “war to end all wars” and said before his death: “It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands.”

As the last British survivor of the First World War trenches, Harry came to represent the generation of ordinary men who served.

He was painted, sculpted and had a racehorse named after him. Royalty and celebrities were keen to meet him and shake his hand.

When he died more than 1,000 people – including dignitaries from around the world – attended his funeral.

Then Prime Minister Gordon Brown said his death marked the passing of the “noblest of all the generations”.