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Aug
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9th 
Harry Patch (In Memory of) - Radiohead Beautiful, haunting new Radiohead song, set to amazing footage of the first great war. I am the only one that got through Henry John “Harry” Patch (17 June 1898 – 25 July 2009)—known as “the Last 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 had refused to discuss his war experiences, until approached in 1998 for the BBC One documentary Veterans, on reflection of which and the realisation that he was part of a fast dwindling group of veterans of “the war to end all wars”, persuaded him to step into the limelight. Patch featured in the 2003 television series World War 1 in Colour, and was quoted as saying “…if any man tells you he went over the top and he wasn’t scared, he’s a damn liar.” In the same series, he reflected upon his lost friends and the moment when he came face to face with a German soldier. He recalled Moses descending from Mount Sinai with God’s commandment, ‘thou shalt not kill’, and couldn’t kill the German. Instead, he shot him in the shoulder, which made him drop his rifle. But he carried on running towards Patch’s Lewis Gun, so he then shot him above the knee, and in the ankle. Patch said, “I had about five seconds to make the decision. I brought him down, but I didn’t kill him.” “Any one of them could have been me. Millions of men came to fight in this war and I find it incredible that I am the only one left.” In November 2004, at the age of 106, he met Charles Kuentz, a 107-year-old veteran who had fought on the German side at the battlefield of Passchendaele (and on the French side in World War II). Patch was quoted as saying: “I was a bit doubtful before meeting a German soldier. Herr Kuentz is a very nice gentleman however. He is all for a united Europe and peace – and so am I”.
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