Background: How did Harry Patch become an unlikely WW1 hero?published at 13:13 Greenwich Mean Time 8 November 2018
Harry Patch was an ordinary soldier of the First World War. Like many who fought, he was conscripted and sent to the trenches of the Western Front, where he was wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917.
Unlike many, Harry lived on until the age of 111, by which time he had become the last British survivor of the World War One trenches. Despite not talking publicly about his war experiences until late in life, he came to represent the generation of ordinary men who served in the First World War. When he died in 2009, over 1,000 people, including dignitaries from around the world, attended his funeral.
But when war broke out, men like Harry were not seen as heroes-in-waiting. Instead it was a very different type of soldier who captured the public imagination.