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The death of Harry Patch, on July 25, was sadly lost in the tumble of last week's news cycle.
Patch was the last British World War I vet--a survivor of the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres). He was 111 years-old.
Patch, a staunch war critic throughout the remainder of his life, was unsentimental--"mud, mud, and more mud, mixed together with blood," was how he remembered the conflict in interviews with historian Richard van Emden. His most vivid memory of the battle was the loss of a close friend: "I was with him for the last 60 seconds of his life. He gasped one word -- 'Mother.' That one word has run through my brain for 88 years. I will never forget it."
The Battle of Passchendaele (July-November 1917) was one of the fiercest battles of World War I, characterized by bog-like conditions, trench fighting and chemical warfare (mustard gas was used extensively by the German defenders). Contemporary German histories seem to corroborate Patch's account of the battle for the Belgian hamlet:
"Attack after attack, clashing over the expanse of rubble, is textured into a jumble of bloody individual hand-to-hand combats, which are simultaneously played out across the whole debris-filled complex...the
artillery of both sides shoots indiscriminately into the ruins. At midnight, Passchendaele is lost...Passchendaele remains in the hands of the Canadians."
Frank Buckles, of Charles Town, West Virginia, is the last surviving American veteran of World War I. Buckles served in France as an Army ambulance driver.
The World War I generation has always fascinated me. There have been many centenarian documentary projects in this country--witnesses at the dawn of air travel, the rise of the automobile, and the birth of telecommunications that have transformed so much of our day-to-day lives. They were the first in their families to leave the family farm for the city, and were sent to fight in the original "war to end all wars." Photographer David DeJonge has been compiling a photographic history of these veterans since the mid-1990's. Each photograph is like a window into a lost way of life: like looking into a house that's been abandoned for decades, now still, and echos with simple joys--a home birth, a porch courtship, a family dinner full of local ingredients. I take heart that people still care enough to save this way of life from the weeds.