The Last Fighting Tommy: The Life of Harry Patch, Last Veteran of the Trenches, 1898-2009

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A&C Black, 2 giu 2008 - 256 pagine
'The Last Fighting Tommy' tells the extraordinary and moving story of a man whose life has spanned six monarchs and 20 Prime Ministers. Harry Patch, 110 years old, is the last British soldier alive to have fought in the trenches of the First World War. From his vivd menories of an Edwardian childhood, the horror of the Great War and fighting in the mud of the Battle of Passchendale to working on the home front in the Second World War and fame in later life as a veteran, The Last Fighting Tommy is the story of an ordinary man's extraordinary life.
 

Sommario

Victorian Born
15
Edwardian Raised
41
Joining
55
In the Trenches
68
Passchendaele 1917
85
Wounded
108
Mutiny
127
Back to Work
137
World War II
162
Growing Older
188
Life Begins at 100
199
Harry His Family and Friends
208
Funeral Address by Jim Ross
226
Picture Credits
232
Copyright

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Informazioni sull'autore (2008)

Harry Patch served as a private in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. He was married in 1919 and had two sons. Between the wars he worked as a plumber and on building sites in the Bristol area, and when the Second World War broke out, he served first as a fire fighter with the Auxiliary Fire Service throughout the Bath Blitz, and later alongside American troops in the run-up to D-Day. In 2002 he attended the seventy-fifth anniversary of the inauguration of the Menin Gate at Ypres, and in 2005 he took part in the BBC TV documentary The Last Tommy and was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Bristol. He lives in Somerset.



Richard van Emden has interviewed over 270 veterans of the Great War and has written widely on the 1914-18 conflict. His previous books include Britain's Last Tommies, Boy Soldiers of the Great War, and the best-selling The Trench. He has visited the Somme and Ypres every year since 1985 and has an expert knowledge of the First World War battlefields. He lives in London.

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