A reflection in senior school assembly by Andie Gbedemah, Year 12

Every year on Remembrance Day the sacrifice of British soldiers is remembered and acknowledged by a two minute silence at 11 o’clock. One minute for the soldiers who have fallen and another for those still fighting. This act of remembrance is hugely important as it ensures that the soldiers, who have risked and lost their lives to protect our country, are honoured and allows time for reflection on current and past conflicts.

This Remembrance Day is especially poignant since Harry Patch,

the last surviving soldier to serve in the trenches, passed away this year at the age of 111. Harry Patch was briefly Britain’s oldest man and the last survivor to have gone 'over the top' whilst serving in the trenches. Of the nearly 300 World War One veterans surviving a decade ago, now only one remains. It is clear to see that the First World War is truly slipping into history and therefore it is all the more important to continue this act of remembrance “lest we forget”.

On turning 18 Patch was conscripted into the British army and it was with great reluctance that he served, he later said in an interview “I didn’t want to go and fight anyone, but it was a case of having to”; his experience in thetrenches led him to be a resolute pacifist in his later life.                

Patch trained as a marksman and in 1917 he served in the 7th Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry at the Battle of

Passchendaele.  The Battle of Passchendaele began in July 1917 and was known to the soldiers who fought as the 'Battle of Mud'.  The Allies’ attack began with heavy artillery bombardment; this allowed the Germans to fully prepare themselves for the infantry attack that followed. As well as losing the element of surprise the Allies were attacking the German troops in terrible conditions. In the first days of August the area in Flanders experienced the heaviest rainfall in thirty years. This turned the battle ground into a treacherous swamp. It was not until 6th of November that the village of Passchendaele was taken. The British lost 310,000 men, gaining only a few kilometres of territory.

The five members of Patch’s like-minded gun crew decided they would not kill another man unless absolutely necessary. Patch showed great courage in this and to his knowledge never killed another soldier. Yet he was faced with some terrifying circumstances, for example when he came across a young Cornish soldier wounded in no-man’s land. The young man, in unbearable pain, begged Patch to shoot him, but Patch could not bring himself to do this and the soldier died within minutes of his request.  Patch was then attacked by a German soldier, but with thoughts of the Cornish soldier still in his mind, Patch shot the German below the knee and below the ankle, wounding rather than killing him. This act of compassion in such a brutal environment is inspiring and the former poet laureate Andrew Motion wrote about the experience in the third verse of ‘The Five Acts of Harry Patch’:

First the hard facts of not wanting to fight,
and the kindness of deciding to shoot men
in the legs but no higher unless needs must,
and the liking among comrades which is truly
deep and wide as love without that particular name,
then Pilckem Ridge and Langemarck and across
the Steenbeek since none of the above can change
what comes next, which is a lad from A Company
shrapnel has ripped open from shoulder to waist
who tells you "Shoot me", but is good as dead
already, and whose final word is "Mother",
which you hear because you kneel to hold
one finger of his hand, and then remember orders
to keep pressing on, support the infantry ahead.

Motion does not mention the injury that took Patch out of the war and took three of his friend’s lives. On 22nd of September Harry and his team were going back to the support line when a shell exploded near by. Patch awoke in a casualty clearing station and after hours of pain Patch had a 2 inch piece of shrapnel removed from his groin. Despite the lack of anaesthetic, the physical pain Patch went through was not nearly as damaging as the emotional anguish he experienced on discovering that his three friends had been killed in the explosion. Their remains were never found.

After the war Harry Patch spoke rarely of his experiences and it was not until turning 100 that he was traced by a journalist. Patch carried the weight of the Great War with him long after its end, as did many of the soldiers who fought and survived. General Sir Richard Dannatt fittingly described Patch as “the last of a generation that in youth was steadfast in its duty in the face of cruel sacrifice”.

Although I have focused on the life of a single man in a single war there are of course many still fighting today.  As they see it as their duty to fight for their country I see it as our duty to honour and remember them.