Harry Patch, RIP

The last surviving veteran of the trenches of the Great War, Harry Patch, passed away this weekend.

He said:

War is a calculated and a condoned slaughter of human beings.

The Guardian obituary notes that he wrote in his The Last Fighting Tommy, which reportedly made him the oldest first-time author:

[P]oliticians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder.

According to Wikipedia on Private Patch in the series World War 1 in Colour:

He recalled Moses descending from Mount Sinai with God's commandment, 'thou shalt not kill', and couldn't kill the German. Instead, he shot him in the shoulder, which made him drop his rifle. But he carried on running towards Patch's Lewis Gun, so he then shot him above the knee, and in the ankle. Patch said, "I had about five seconds to make the decision. I brought him down, but I didn't kill him".

Mr. Patch shook hands late in life with a German veteran.

Rest in peace!


Elsewhere: The Monarchist, Trond Norén Isaksen, Kingdom of Chaos