[Peace-discuss] The Wisdom of Harry Patch

[C. G. Estabrook]

Posted: 06 Aug 2009 07:35 AM PDT

Harry Patch was buried today. He was Britain’s last combat veteran of World War 
I. He died on July 25 at age 111. He was also the oldest man in Europe. Patch, 
who rarely talked about his war experiences, boasted that he hadn’t killed 
anyone in combat. “War isn’t worth one life,” Patch said, it is “calculated and 
condoned slaughter of human beings.” In his autobiography The Last Fighting 
Tommy, Patch wrote that “politicians who took us to war should have been given 
the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising 
nothing better than legalised mass murder.” In the last years of his life, Patch 
warned some young naval recruits that they shouldn’t join.

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