The Last Veteran
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p.205 ‘I failed’ – Middlebrooke, p.352
Death’s Men – D. Winter, p.16
p.206 du Picq – ibid., p.13
Chapter 4
p.213 London Transport Museum see e.g. Metro, 6.8.08
‘influenced culture’ – National Curriculum Programme of Study for English
case study – http://www.qca.org.uk/14-19/6th-form-schools/index_1256.htm
p.216 Western Front Association – WFA website home page p.218 Beckett – Guardian review, 17.5.08
p.221 Patch on 11 November – Patch and van Emden, p.203
p.224 Goodwin – Allingham and Goodwin, p.154
p.226 ‘literally waiting’ – ibid., p.156
‘there was a world’ – ibid., p.157
p.227 ‘Ask men’ – ibid., p.160
p.228 ‘War’s stupid’ – BBC News Channel, 4.8.04,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3534068.stm
Roberts and Charles – Arthur, Last Post, pp.144, 191
Finnigan – ibid., p.105
Patch – Patch and van Emden, pp.203, 188–9
Withers – Arthur, Last Post, p.88
p.233 Hughes – Daily Telegraph, 20.11.08
p.236 Allingham – quoted in epigraph to Patch and van Emden
p.238 ‘While a lot’ – Patch and van Emden, p.55
p.239 Tucky Mill – ibid., p.18
Rosemount – ibid., p.23
p.240 ‘wasn’t worth’ – ibid., p.28
‘I was content’ – ibid., p.30
p.241 ‘scruffs’ – ibid., p.53
p.242 ‘there was no’ – ibid., p.62
p.243 gun weight – ibid., p.73
p.244 ‘We all knew’ – ibid., p.69
p.246 ‘The Platoon Commander’ – War Office manual
gun team names – Daily Telegraph, 12.7.07
p.247 ‘We were just’ – Patch and van Emden, pp.111–12
p.248 ‘Each louse’ – Private Harry Patch, BBC TV
‘shovelled’ – Patch and van Emden, p.112
‘It doesn’t matter’ – ibid., p.74
p.249 ‘Anyone who tells’ – ibid., p.105
p.250 ‘watching the water’ – ibid., p.74
‘The shelling’ – ibid., p.106
p.251 ‘You couldn’t deal’ – ibid.
p.254 wounded soldier – ibid., p.94
p.255 ‘I couldn’t kill’ – The Last Tommy, BBC TV
p.256 ‘The period’ – Patch and van Emden, p.103
Haig – ibid., p.102
p.257 wounding – ibid., p.109
p.259 ‘there was nothing’ – ibid., p.203
‘My reaction’ – ibid., p.111
‘I never once’ – ibid., p.116
p.261 ‘The war might’ – ibid., p.147
‘thoroughly disillusioned’ – ibid., p.137
‘I’m positive’ – ibid., p.94
‘faith in the Church’ – ibid., p.137
p.262 ‘anything to do’ – ibid., p.196
‘kept in touch’ – ibid., p.203
p.264 ‘some big noise’ – ibid., p.149
‘I don’t remember’ – ibid., p.154
p.268 ‘To be honest’ – ibid., pp.193–4
p.269 ‘they didn’t die’ – ibid., p.195
p.270 flash – The Last Tommy, BBC TV
‘slept through’ – Patch and van Emden, p.197
p.271 ‘I don’t know why’ – ibid., p.200
‘I looked’ – ibid.
‘I don’t feel’ – ibid., p.201
p.272 Patch and Kuentz – The Last Tommy, BBC TV
p.275 ‘It means’ – interview with Tony Patterson for Western Front Association: http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/great-war-people/48-brothers-arms/675-charles-kuentz.html
‘Charles was’ – Patch and van Emden, p.201
p.276 ‘simply a military show’ – van Emden, p.356
remembrance – Patch and van Emden, p.203
Kuentz – Patterson interview, supra
‘usually all people’ – Patch and van Emden, p.199
p.277 ‘wheelchair access’ – CWGC Debt of Honour website
p.278 Clayton’s words – Patch and van Emden, p.202
p.281 FHM – www.fhm.com/news/harry-patch-111-year-old-fhm-columnist-has-died-20090727
p.282 ‘never hesitated’ – Patch and van Emden, p.216
p.283 ‘everybody involved’ – BBC News Channel, 16.8.06:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4796579.stm
p.284 ‘who had seen action’ – Patch and van Emden, p.204
p.285 Légion d’honneur – BBC News Channel, 9.3.09: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/7931817.stm
p.287 state funeral – Patch and van Emden, p.204
‘a simple, private funeral’ – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8185693.stm
‘He could have dealt’– ibid.
p.288 Ross – ibid.
p.289 ‘an ambassador’ – live funeral coverage, BBC News Channel, 6.8.09
p.291 ‘No one else’ – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8185693.stm
‘all that’s best’ – Sir Richard Dannatt, BBC News Channel, 6.8.09
‘in a direct line’ – Peter Barton, ibid.
‘I didn’t want to’ – Patch and van Emden, p.59
p.294 Dye – Allingham and Goodwin, p.222
‘breathed life’ – ibid., p.201
teacher – BBC Television news, 17.6.09
p.295 Sorley – Sorley, p.78
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My first thanks go to Nicholas Pearson at Fourth Estate, who in April 2006 suggested I should write this book. At the time there were several British veterans of the First World War alive, and the logistics of writing a book that placed the last of them at its centre were always going to be complicated. Nicholas and my agent, David Miller, discussed with me at length what sort of book it should be, sorted out a publication plan, and then left me to get on with writing it without making too many anxious enquiries as to its progress. Both they and Mark Richards at Fourth Estate, who also saw the book through the press in double-quick time, read the book in draft and in its near-final version, and I am very grateful for their many comments and suggestions. My thanks also go to Eleanor Goymer, Julian Humphries and Rebecca McEwan at Fourth Estate; to Alex Goodwin at Rogers, Coleridge and White, who read the book in its final draft and pointed out several mistakes and weaknesses; to Ian Paten for his meticulous and speedy copy-editing; and to Ben Murphy for his comprehensive index.
I took a decision right from the start that I would not attempt to meet or interview any of the veterans. This was partly because my principal concern was with the notion of a Last Veteran rather than with individuals, but also because I saw no point in bothering the survivors in their extreme old age with questions they had already answered in countless books, television programmes and newspaper interviews. While researching this book both Henry Allingham and Harry Patch published excellent autobiographies in collaboration with Dennis Goodwin and Richard van Emden respectively. I am indebted to both books, but in particular – as it turned out – to The Last Fighting Tommy.
As always, my first and most severe editor was Christopher Potter, whose careful reading of the book led to innumerable improvements in its structure and content. Special thanks also go to Mark Bostridge, who – enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and undaunted by torrential rain – proved the perfect companion on a trip to the Somme. Like him, other friends and colleagues alerted me to news items about First World War veterans from all around the world; supplied me with all manner of ideas and information; listened patiently while I talked about the book, and otherwise helped me during the three years it took to research and write it. In particular, I’d like to record my gratitude to: Frank Ahern and a group of Upper VIth History and English Literature pupils at Canford School, Adam Bager, Edward Behrens, Thomas Blaikie, Iai
n Burnside, Andreas Campomar, Miranda Carter, Niladri Chatterjee and a group of MA students at Kalyani University, Timothy d’Arch Smith, Santanu Das, Richard Davenport-Hines, Paul Fierlinger, Chris Fletcher, David Gelber, Georgina Hammick, J. Casey Hammond, Selina Hastings, Christopher Hawtree, Alison Hennegan, Christie Hickman, Sam Leith, Candia McWilliam, Wendy Moffat, Neel Mukherjee, Gina Rozner, Bill Rutkowski, Alice Sielle, Lynne Truss, Frances Wilson.
Lines from ‘For the Fallen’ are reproduced by kind permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Laurence Binyon. Lines from Gilbert Frankau’s ‘Only an Officer’ are reproduced by kind permission of AP Watt Ltd on behalf of Timothy d’Arch Smith. Extracts from the poems of Siegfried Sassoon, copyright © Siegfried Sassoon, are reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of George Sassoon. Country Joe and the Fish’s ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag’ copyright © Joe McDonald, 1965, renewed 1993 by Alkatraz Corner Music, BMI, used by kind permission. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and the publisher would be pleased to hear from any that have been overlooked so that corrections and due acknowledgement can be made in future editions.
Lastly, I could not have written this book without the efficient staff and the unmatched resources of the London Library.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETER PARKER is the author of The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public-School Ethos (1987) and biographies of J. R. Ackerley (1989) and Christopher Isherwood (2004). He edited The Reader’s Companion to the Twentieth-Century Novel (1994) and The Reader’s Companion to Twentieth-Century Writers (1995), and was an associate editor of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).
PRAISE
From the reviews of The Last Veteran:
‘To read Peter Parker’s fine book on Harry Patch, The Last Veteran, is to see something of what the experience of the war created in one man; to see a kind of depth and human solidity shaped by the tragedy’
ROWAN WILLIAMS, Archbishop of Canterbury
‘A fine work of history and research. [Patch] became remarkable for living so long. But what this account of his life, and the times he lived, really shows is that he and millions like him were remarkable long before that’
Daily Telegraph
‘Illuminates. Full of fresh fascinating detail’
Guardian
‘[This] moving homage to Patch is an occasion for thoughtful reflection on our recent military history, the echo of war down the generations and our sense of ourselves in the modern world’
The Times
‘As Parker’s essential book shows, their death takes from us not just a human trace of the trenches, but a reminder that remembrance should be painful, unsentimental and monitory – or else it is not worth doing at all’
TLS
‘Parker is a careful and thoughtful writer and his book uses the spare materials of Harry’s life as a springboard into wider and deeper waters’
Literary Review
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public-School Ethos
Ackerley: A Life of J.R. Ackerley
The Reader’s Companion to the Twentieth-Century Novel
The Reader’s Companion to Twentieth-Century Writers
Isherwood: A Life
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