The Last Fighting Tommy: Private Henry John Patch

The last fighting Tommy

Pte. Henry John Patch (Harry)

C Company 7th D.C.L.I. [Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry]

17th June 1898-25th July 2009

Age 111

Fought in the battle of Passchendaele

During the 1914-1918 war

Freeman of the City of Wells

also representing all the brave young men

lost in The Great War. 

Harry Patch, 1898-2009
from Abroad in the Yard

Private Harry Patch was the last soldier who fought in the trenches of World War I to die. He suffered unimaginable horrors and carried many of the details into his late years, as told in an interview with The (London)Telegraph here.

He entered the war in June of 1917 and served as an assistant gunner in a Lewis Gun section, according to Lee Rimmer in Abroad in the Yard, and suffered injuries to the groin from shrapnel when a shell exploded killing three of his fellow soldiers.

This memorial is in beautiful Wells, England, in Somerset. In the photo below it is on the left side of the street on the left, just above the red car. You can read more about his life on his Wikipedia page, here.