Missing memorial to First World War trenches survivor reappears

A MEMORIAL stone dedicated to Britain’s last survivor of the First World War trenches has reappeared, two years after going missing in Belgium.

Harry Patch, who died in 2009 aged 111, was the last surviving British soldier to have fought in the conflict, and paid for the stone six miles from Ypres, marking the spot where he went over the top.

After it disappeared in 2018, it was replaced following a fundraising campaign.

A Belgian lorry driver rescued it after apparently seeing a local farmer reversing his tractor into the stone, and then threatening to throw it into the Steenbeek stream.

It has now been returned to the De Dreve cafe at Polygon Wood, where it will be on display until May, before moving to the garden of the Talbot House Museum in Poperinge, which is dedicated to the soldiers who served at Ypres.

Military historian Jeremy Banning said the driver only appeared with the stone on Sunday - adding: “It’s very strange. I don’t think we’ll ever quite get to the bottom of it. I think it’s one of those things we have to put down to ‘Oh well, it’s turned up now’.”

Mr Banning said Mr Petch went to Talbot House in 1917 as a 19-year-old and went there again when he returned to the battlefields.

He said: “(He) loved the place. It has a real charm. He opened the new museum wing there during one of his return visits. They have a new exhibition opening in May. If it’s going to be anywhere that would be the best place for it.”