Harry Patch dies

[Captain Seafort]

The last Tommy

The last British survivor of the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, has died at the age of 111.

Mr Patch was conscripted into the Army aged 18 and fought in the Battle of Passchendaele at Ypres in 1917 in which more than 70,000 British soldiers died.

He was raised in Coombe Down, near Bath, and had been living at a care home in Wells, Somerset.

The oldest WWI veteran Henry Allingham, who served in the Royal Navy and the RAF, died at the age of 113 a week ago.

His biographer Richard Emden said Mr Patch passed away at 0850 BST on Saturday morning.

A statement from the Fletcher House care home said: "It is with much sadness that we must announce the death of Mr Harry Patch on 25 July at the age of 111.

"Funeral arrangements are being made in accordance with Mr Patch's wishes, and we wish to extend our deepest sympathies to his family, friends and the residents and staff of Fletcher House."

He goes to join his old mates

[Patrick Degan]

Harry Patch. Quite an ordinary name, really. An ordinary name for a seemingly ordinary man... who lived 111 years and had to carry the horrors of Passchendaele with him for 93 of those years.

[Simon_Jester]

This poem by Siegfried Sassoon seems appropriate.