I read last week of the sad news that Harry Patch the last survivor of the First World War passed away, just a week after Henry Allingham.
With Harry’s death the generation that fought through the horror of the trenches has finally faded into the history books.
On June 3rd this year Jack Ross the last ANZAC passed away.
There has been much written about both, but I thought a paragraph in Harry Patch’s own words summed up the war for the “Last Tommy.”
“I don’t think it is possible to truly explain the bond that is forged between a soldier in the trenches and his fellow soldiers. There you all are, no matter what your life in civvy street, covered in lice, desperately hungry, eking out the small treats – the ounce of tobacco, the biscuit. You relied in him and he on you, never really thinking that it was just the same for the enemy. But it was. It was every bit as bad.”
Let us hope and pray that we never experience the horror they went through.
1 comment:
Good post.
Sad they both died in the same week.
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