THE LAST BRITISH WWI VET DIED

Excerpts from cnn:

Harry Patch -- the last surviving British soldier from World War I -- died peacefully at his care home in the southwestern English city of Wells, Saturday July 25 at the age of 111.

His death came a week after fellow British World War I veteran Henry Allingham died at the age of 113.

Patch was the last surviving soldier to have witnessed the horrors of trench warfare in the first World War.

He fought and was seriously wounded in Ypres, Belgium, in 1917 at the Battle of Passchendaele, in which 70,000 of his fellow soldiers died -- including three of his close friends.

He fought in the trenches between June and September of 1917 and was involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the war. In late September he was wounded when a light shell exploded above his head, bringing an end to his military service.

He received battlefield treatment without anesthetic.

In World War II, Patch joined the Auxiliary Fire Service and helped tackle the fires caused by heavy German raids on the English cities of Bath and Bristol.

Patch didn't speak about the war until he turned 100. "He tried to suppress the memories and to live as normal a life as possible; the culture of his time said that he was fortunate to have survived and that he should get on with his life," a Ministry of Defence biography says. "That suited Harry; he could 'forget' his demons, the memories of what happened to him and to his close friends."

"In speaking about his experiences, Harry began at last to come to terms with his war, and was at peace with himself and his memories," the Defence Ministry said. "His thoughts then turned to reconciliation, to the long-term effects of suffering and coming to terms with that suffering."

Patch returned to Belgium in 2002, something he had said he would never do, and laid a wreath to his battalion, the Defence Ministry said.

Two years later, he met and shook hands with a German artilleryman from the Western Front, Charles Kuentz. Patch later laid a wreath at Langemark Cemetery for the German war dead.

"Harry was delighted to receive these awards and wore the medals with great pride, but he always made it clear that he wore these medals as a representative of the selfless generation he had come to represent," the Ministry of Defence said.

Patch wrote a book detailing his life in 2007, called "The Last Fighting Tommy." The name referred to the slang term for British privates.

"While the country may remember Harry as a soldier, we will remember him as a dear friend," said Jim Ross, a close friend. "He was a man of peace who used his great age and fame as the last survivor of the trenches to communicate two simple messages: Remember with gratitude and respect those who served on all sides, (and) settle disputes by discussion, not war."

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Tank in badly shelled mud area, Battle of Passchendaele.

Aerial view of Passchendaele village before and after the battle.