he route the procession for Harry Patch took covered a mile from the nursing home where he died to the cathedral. After the service, he was buried where he was born, in the mining village of Combe Down, twenty miles northeast of Wells.
When war was declared in 1914, Mr. Patch felt no desire to enlist, but he was drafted two years later and sent to France with the 7th Battalion, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. He was part of the British offensive which began July 31, 1917 at the Third Battle of Ypres. During the month of August, it rained all but three days in what Patch described as "mud, mud, and more mud mixed together with blood."
He was wounded September 22nd in a shell blast that killed three members of his gun team. The offensive went on until November 6th when the British command claimed victory after having advanced five miles and captured what was left of the Village of Passchendaele. Nearly 600,00 were killed and wounded on both sides.
In 2007, Mr. Patch wrote a book of his experiences with historian Richard van Emden, called "The Last Fighting Tommy." "Tommy" is the name British soldiers are often called. On November 11, 2008, Mr. Patch joined two other British veterans of the war, Henry Allingham and Bill Stone at the National Remembrance Observance of the 90th anniversary of the end of the war. Since then, all three have died: Allingham at age 113 the week before Patch, and Stone at age 108 on January 10th.
Getting Near the Last of the Noblest Generation.
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