Harry Patch
Jul 26
2
I knew nothing of Harry Patch until his name was everywhere I looked this week. He was a beautiful little old man who had fought in the trenches of the first world war. At the ripe age of 111, he passed away. Harry was the last surviving British soldier of that war and yet did not speak of his experience until age 100. After that he became somewhat of an advocate for peaceful resolution of conflict. His story moves me.
It is so easy to forget how real, and how close, war is to us all. We all know someone affected by it, whether or not they are happy to speak of it. No matter how any of us feel about war itself, isn’t it important that we remember the humanity of those fighting?
[...] this weekend throwing a fit about my mother’s passing and researching a beautiful man named Harry Patch, I had hoped to write a lovely little bit about coping. As an aside, Jennifer Huddleston is an [...]
Pingback by The Neighbor Got Me High « Drew and Jen go to London — 26 July 2009 @ 10:38 pmoh my god. i hadn’t heard about him either until i saw this photo in a WWI exhibit at the imperial war museum. it tore me up. from the flo’ up. for real. then i got home and had an email from the radiohead mailing list about how thom yorke heard an interview from harry a few years back which inspired him to write a song which the band just recorded a few weeks ago, coincidentally just before harry’s death. it’s really chilling.
Comment by Kassi — 12 August 2009 @ 8:08 pm