This moving and timely book explores the way the First World War
has been thought about and commemorated, and how it has affected
its own, and later, generations.
On 11 November 1920, huge crowds lined the streets of London for
the funeral of the Unknown Warrior. As the coffin was drawn on a
gun carriage from the Cenotaph to Westminster Abbey, the King and
Ministers of State followed silently behind. The modern world had
tilted on its axis, but it had been saved. Armistice Day was born,
the acknowledgement of the great sacrifice made by a whole
generation of British men and women.
Now, almost a century later, Harry Patch, the last British
veteran who saw active service, has died. Our final link with the
First World War is broken.
Harry Patch was born in 1898 and was conscripted in 1916. He
served with a Lewis gun team at the Battle of Passchendaele and in
September 1917 was wounded by a shell that killed three of his
comrades. After the war, Patch returned to Somerset to work as a
plumber, a job he continued to do until his retirement.
The First World War was fought not by a professional army but by
ordinary civilians like Patch, who epitomised Edwardian Britain and
the sense, now lost, of what Britain stood for and why it was worth
fighting for. The Last Veteran tells Patch's story, and explores
the meaning of the war to those who fought in it and the
generations that have followed. Peter Parker's illuminating and
timely book is a moving tribute to a remarkable generation."
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