Last British WWI Soldier Dies; Leaves Gripping Account of Trench Warfare Hell
Britain's last remaining World War I soldier, Harry Patch, died at the age of 111 today, leaving behind a collection of gripping stories about the inhuman conditions he and his comrades faced in the trenches of Ypres, in West Flanders, Belgium, during the battles of Passchendaele and Pilkem. The BBC has an amazing roundup of Patch's memories of his time in the war, in which he describes the muddy trenches - a mere three feet wide and six feet deep - that he had to occupy for days on end. The soldiers were mired in filth for months at a time, with the constant companionship of legions of lice:
From the time I went to France - the second week in June 1917 - until I left 23rd December 1917, injured by shellfire, I never had a bath ... For each lousy louse, he had his own particular bite, and his own itch and he’d drive you mad. We used to turn our vests inside out to get a little relief. And you’d go down all the seams, if you dared show a light, with a candle, and burn them out. And those little devils who’d laid their eggs in the seam, you’d turn your vest inside out and tomorrow you’d be just as lousy as you were today. And that was the trenches.
There are several places in France and Belgium where you can see the trenches and battlefields Patch wouldn't even talk about until he turned 100 years old. In addition to the battlefield memorials and war museums of Ypres - the Sanctuary Wood Museum Hill 62 is a good bet - historical travelers can check out the Battlefields of the Somme in northern France, which was the setting for one of the bloodiest clashes in history. Visitors to the Somme today can walk amid miles of winding trenches, where going "over the top" meant near-certain death, and more than 1.5 million young men became casualties of the first mechanized war.
[Photo: BBC]
Related Stories:
· Harry Patch, Last British WWI Soldier, Dies at 111 [AP via Google]
· The Last Tommy Gallery [BBC]
· Discovered In the Mud: The Intact Battlefields of Passchendaele and a Grim Harvest of Bones [The Independent]
· Historical Travel [Jaunted]
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