From the July 26th MailonLine.
Harry Patch was conscripted at age 18 into the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry and served as an assistant gunman on a Lewis machine gun team.
He was badly injured by a shell during the fighting at Passachendaele between June and September 1917, an action that cost Britain 70,000 men, including many of Mr. Patch's friends.
He was staunchly anti-war, calling it "organised murder" and not "worth the loss of a few lives, let alone thousands."
Once, while "going over the top," meaning charging out of the trenches into "no-man's land," they came across a young soldier who "was ripped open from his shoulder to his waist by shrapnel and was lying in a pool of blood.
"When we got to him, he looked at us and said, 'Shoot me.' He was beyond human help and before we could draw a revolver, he was dead. His last word was 'Mother.'"
The Noblest Generation. --Cooter
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