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Sunday 27 May 2012

Reflections on Passchendaele

The last Tommy says: 'It was a waste of time'

Harry Patch, 109, recalls his career in Kitchener’s army

‘No idea,’ says Harry, when you ask him the obvious: how on earth he made it so far. He doesn’t drink; he gave up smoking when he was 60; he does a little light stretching when he feels like it, but that’s about it. ‘I’m happy and I don’t have any ambitions. I achieved what I wanted when I became a member of the Royal Sanitary Institute, when I wanted to be either a building inspector or a sanitary engineer.’

Which does, rather, put Harry’s world view into perspective. As far as Harry’s concerned he’s a retired plumber whose rich and varied life — at least by the cloistered standards of his rustic-idyll childhood in Combe Down, near Bath — has included two marriages, two sons and stints as fireman in Bath during the Blitz and working with GIs during the build-up to the Normandy landings.

But for almost everyone else, the only part of Harry’s life that counts is the tiny segment of it (one 54th) he spent serving as a private in Kitchener’s army from his call-up in October 1916, through the third battle of Ypres — Passchendaele — to his discharge two years later.

A few days before the 90th anniversary of his first journey over the top at Passchendaele I’ve come to his (very friendly, well-run) state care home in Somerset to squeeze out of this gentle, surprisingly lucid old boy with clear blue eyes and still-perfect sight his most painful Great War memories.

Among the worst is that of the ‘lad from A Company’ he encountered on his way up the line, ripped from shoulder to waist by shrapnel. ‘Shoot me,’ gasped the boy, but before anyone could draw a revolver he was dead. ‘And the final word he uttered was “Mother!” I was with him in the last seconds of his life. It wasn’t a cry of despair, it was a cry of surprise and joy. I think his mother was in the next world to greet him and he knew it. And from that day I have always remembered that cry, and that death is not the end.’

For years afterwards, Harry couldn’t bring himself to discuss the war. Only after his 100th birthday did he begin to tell the stories which, even now, cause him to choke up halfway through and descend into mournful introspection. It was the fate of his Lewis-gun crew which grieves him most. They were a tight-knit group, bound by the fact that as machine-gunners with the telltale ‘suicide badge’ (a laurel wreath with LG in the middle) on their sleeves, they were all for the chop if the Hun ever captured them.

More articles from: James Delingpole | this section

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