# Last Tommy dies **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 25, 2009, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218 "2009-07-25T13:58:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/1 "2009-07-25T13:58:33Z")
> **[BBC NEWS | UK | WWI veteran Patch dies aged 111](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8168691.stm)** > > The last British survivor to have fought in the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, has died at the age of 111. Last veteran of the British Army in WWI has died, meaning that the trenches are now beyond living memory. RIP to a true hero. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/2 "2009-07-25T14:54:58Z")
I don’t think he was a hero himself, but as the last representative of those that fought, his loss is important. I hope there is a special ceremony to honour all those who fought. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/3 "2009-07-25T17:07:08Z")
I don’t know, anyone who went through [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele) and got out the other side deserves the title ‘hero’ in my opinion, especially when that word these days is thrown around at sportsmen and the like. In any case, it is quite literally the end of an era, out of the millions of men who fought in the trenches there are now none left. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/4 "2009-07-25T18:28:43Z")
Twenty thousend Brits killed and forty thousend wounded on the first DAY of the Battle of the Somme is something to remember,but that old guy,nice bloke that he was had an easy war,thats why he survived. Smashing bloke ,yes.hero no. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/5 "2009-07-25T19:17:49Z")
Easy war? Are you mad? “During his time in France he fought at Battle of Passchendaele (also known as the Third Battle of Ypres). Patch was injured in the groin when a shell exploded overhead at 22:30 on 22 September 1917, killing three of his comrades. After this he was removed from the front line and returned to England on 23 December 1917.” > **[Harry Patch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Patch)** > > Henry John Patch (17 June 1898 – 25 July 2009), dubbed in his later years "the Last Fighting Tommy", was an English supercentenarian, briefly the oldest man in Europe, and the last surviving trench combat soldier of the First World War from any country. Patch was not the longest-surviving soldier of the First World War, but he was the fifth-longest-surviving veteran of any sort from the First World War, behind British veterans Claude Choules and Florence Green, Frank Buckles of the United Stat... Sounds like he had a whale of a time. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/6 "2009-07-25T19:25:43Z")
I think that most people would agree that being in a battle is not especially pleasant. But calling anyone who experienced a battle and lived to tell about it (or not) devalues the honorific ‘hero’. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/7 "2009-07-25T19:30:07Z")
:smack: You don’t think it’s been devalued enough? You don’t think that someone who had lived through all that (or not) deserves to be called a hero? I hadn’t thought this would be a contentious point. If any of us were thrust upon a WWI battlefield we would likely soil ourselves and die rapidly. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/8 "2009-07-25T19:53:52Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > I hadn’t thought this would be a contentious point. I wasn’t going to say anything. I didn’t after reading the first reply. But since it has become an issue, I had to mention it because ‘hero’ has been overused for about a decade (IMO). A few years ago I saw a young soldier being interviewed in Iraq. She said (paraphrasing), ‘The heroes… well, we’re all heroes…’ No, not everyone in a war zone is a hero. Not every soldier who is killed is a hero. If everyone is a ‘hero’, then who are the ‘Heroes’? It reminds me of those ‘My child is an exceptional student at [name] School’ bumper stickers, or ‘There are no winners and no losers competitions’ where everyone gets a prize. See, the kids ‘won’ just by participating. You’re right; if any of us were ‘thrust into a WWI battlefield’ (or WWII, or Korea, or Afghanistan, or…) we’d probably ‘shit our pants’. I am in no way saying that what Mr. Patch went through was not difficult, not terrifying, not life-threatening, and so on. And I don’t intend to belittle his service. But he’s not a ‘hero’ in the traditional sense of the word. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/9 "2009-07-25T20:16:54Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > I wasn’t going to say anything. I didn’t after reading the first reply. But since it has become an issue, I had to mention it because ‘hero’ has been overused for about a decade (IMO). > > A few years ago I saw a young soldier being interviewed in Iraq. She said (paraphrasing), ‘The heroes… well, we’re all heroes…’ No, not everyone in a war zone is a hero. Not every soldier who is killed is a hero. If everyone is a ‘hero’, then who are the ‘Heroes’? It reminds me of those ‘My child is an exceptional student at [name] School’ bumper stickers, or ‘There are no winners and no losers competitions’ where everyone gets a prize. See, the kids ‘won’ just by participating. > > You’re right; if any of us were ‘thrust into a WWI battlefield’ (or WWII, or Korea, or Afghanistan, or…) we’d probably ‘shit our pants’. I am in no way saying that what Mr. Patch went through was not difficult, not terrifying, not life-threatening, and so on. And I don’t intend to belittle his service. But he’s not a ‘hero’ in the traditional sense of the word. I’ve no doubt you are right (especially on the overuse of the word ‘hero’; see my second post); perhaps not every single serviceman automatically deserves the title “hero”, but I’m not suggesting that. What I am suggesting is that someone who went through the horror of the trenches does. Note that he was a conscript; essentially he’d been plucked from what was still essentially Edwardian England as a plumber and thrust in to one of the most bloody and horrific wars in history (not forgetting that WWI was unlike any war fought before). The fact that an ordinary bloke not only survived front line combat and seeing his friends killed but also was able to return to a normal life after seeing the things he’d seen is incredible, to me anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/10 "2009-07-25T20:22:33Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > I don’t know, anyone who went through [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele) and got out the other side deserves the title ‘hero’ in my opinion, especially when that word these days is thrown around at sportsmen and the like. The wiki article says Hitler went through that and got out the other side. Just an amusing hijack. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/11 "2009-07-25T20:34:57Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > The wiki article says Hitler went through that and got out the other side. Just an amusing hijack. 🙂 Indeed, and compare the effects the war had; Hitler changed from a self confessed “weak-kneed cosmopolitan” in 1914 (see: [Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914-1918: The List Regiment - John Frank Williams - Google Books](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FQ-2HMwtT-cC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s)) into…well, you know the rest. Harry Patch turned from a plumber into…a plumber again. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/12 "2009-07-25T21:02:52Z")
Whether or not Patch was a hero, he was a link to history and to a piece of humanity’s past that appears more remote every day. That’s how history goes - but on the positive side, those links last longer than ever before because people live longer and it’s easier to read and look up the stories. But something changes when the human element gets lost. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/13 "2009-07-25T21:28:17Z")
And now that we have no living survivors, we are one step closer to the same stupid mistake again. Oh. Wait. We already did that. > **[Iran–Iraq War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Iraq_war)** > > Start of war: > 110,000–215,000 soldiers > KDP: 45,000 Peshmerga (1986–88)PUK: 12,000 Peshmerga (1986–88) > [@](#): > > The war came at a great cost in lives and economic damage - a half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers as well as civilians are believed to have died in the war with many more injured and wounded - but brought neither reparations nor change in borders. The conflict is often compared to World War I,[16] in that the tactics used closely mirrored those of the 1914-1918 war, including large scale trench warfare, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, use of barbed wire across trenches and on no-mans land, human wave attacks and Iraq’s extensive use of chemical weapons (such as mustard gas) against Iranian troops and civilians as well as Iraqi Kurds. Mankind disgusts me, sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Bootis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e8c25b/32.png) [@Bootis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootis)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/14 "2009-07-25T21:52:10Z")
Well one of the definitions of ‘hero’ is one who shows great courage. It can be argued that it is not a given that a conscripted soldier in a war is showing great courage just by being there, so that alone does not necessarily make him a hero. Voluntarily choosing to be a fireman during WWII because he was too old to fight? Are we restricting ‘hero’ to mean only mythological warriors of divine descent possessing unusual strength and ability? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/15 "2009-07-25T21:52:15Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > And now that we have no living survivors, we are one step closer to the same stupid mistake again. It’s hard to think of a stupid mistake humanity hasn’t repeated. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/16 "2009-07-26T01:37:31Z")
RIP, Harry. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/17 "2009-07-26T01:43:42Z")
To continue the hijack; maybe the problem isn’t that the word hero is overused, maybe it’s that the word hero is overvalued. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/18 "2009-07-26T01:56:56Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > And now that we have no living survivors, we are one step closer to the same stupid mistake again. Hell, no. The human race has always been good at discovering brand new mistakes to make. Why bother with repeating the old ones? ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/19 "2009-07-26T02:24:58Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Hell, no. The human race has always been good at discovering brand new mistakes to make. Why bother with repeating the old ones? Because they’ve stood the test of time. Why go to the trouble of inventing a new mistake, when you can do something that’s guaranteed to result in catastrophe? ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218/20 "2009-07-26T02:44:44Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > It’s hard to think of a stupid mistake humanity hasn’t repeated. Well, they haven’t done a remake of \*The Blair Witch Project \*yet. But I guess its still early… _Goddammit_ I want my money back! [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-tommy-dies/504218.md?page=2)