Harry Patch, the Last Tommy-- Part 1

As I found out when I looked up Diggers for the death of the last Australian World War I veteran, Tommy is a slang word for British soldier.

This obituary was in the Sunday, July 26th, Chicago Tribune, by Robert Barr, Associated Press. "Last vet of WWI's trenches: Briton wounded in 1917 said that 'it wasn't worth it'

"Harry Patch, Britain's last survivor of the trenches of World War I, was a reluctant soldier who became a powerful eyewitness to the horror of war and a symbol of a lost generation.

Mr Patch, who died Saturday at 111, was wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele, which he remembered as "mud, mud and more mud mixed with blood.

Anyone who tells you that in the trenches they weren't scared, he's a damned liar. You were scared all the time," Mr. Patch was quoted as saying in a book, "The Last Fighting Tommy" written with historian Richard van Emden."

The "Noblest Generation." --Cooter