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HARRY PATCH INTERVIEWS CONTINUED.
Shooting to kill.
I never knew Bob [Harry’s friend and gunner] to use that [Lewis] gun to kill. If he used that gun at all, it was about two feet off the ground and he would wound them in the legs. He wouldn’t kill them if he could help it.
[A German soldier] came to me with a rifle and a fixed bayonet. He had no ammunition, otherwise he could have shot us. He came towards us. I had to bring him down. First of all, I shot him in the right shoulder. He dropped the rifle and the bayonet. He came on. His idea, I suppose, was to kick the gun if he could into the mud, so making it useless. But anyway, he came on and for our own safety, I had to bring him down. I couldn’t kill him. He was a man I didn’t know. I didn’t know his language. I couldn’t talk to him. I shot him above the ankle, above the knee.
He said something to me in German. God knows what it was. But for him the war was over.
He would be picked up by a stretcher bearer. He would have his wounds treated. He would be put into a prisoner-of-war camp. At the end of the war, he would go back to his family. Now, six weeks after that, a fellow countryman of his pulled the lever of the gun that fired the rocket that killed my three mates, and wounded me. If I had met that German soldier after my three mates had been killed, I’d have no trouble at all in killing him.
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Losing friends.
The night we caught it, we were in the front line and we were going back. We had taken the German front line, the German support line and we were coming back from the German support through the German old front line. We had to cross what was the old No Man’s Land. It was crossing there that a rocket burst amongst us. It killed my three mates, it wounded me. We were on open ground.
September 22nd, half-past ten at night. That’s when I lost them. That’s my Remembrance Day. Armistice Day, you remember the thousands of others who died. For what? For nothing. And today you would never get another trench warfare. Never. Today, you got the internal combustion engine, the one like you drive your car and improvement on that. It’s entitled a man to fly, and today a trench is no good. He simply goes down the trench with his machine gun - that’s it. You’ll never get another trench war.
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Being wounded.
You didn’t know you were hit. You never heard the bullet or the shell that hit you. All I can remember was a flash, I went down, blew me down. I suppose I had enough sense, I saw the blood, I had a field dressing on. I must have passed out. How long I lay there I don’t know.
Next thing I found I was in a dressing station. The field bandage had gone, the wound had been cleaned and a clean bandage on it. Around about it was a disinfectant of some sort, to keep the blinking lice away from the blood.
I lay there all the next day and the doctor came to me. ‘You can see the shrapnel – it must have been a ricochet.’ It was just buried in. He said to me, ‘Would you like me to take that out?’ I said, ‘How long will you be?’ He said, ‘Before you answer yes. With no anaesthetic in the camp at all, we’d used it on all the people more seriously wounded than you are.’ He said, ‘If I take that shrapnel out it will be as you are now.’ Pain from it was terrific. I said, ‘Alright carry on.’ Four fellahs held me down, one on each arm, one on each leg, and I can feel the cut of that scalpel now as he went through and pulled it out.
The doctor came to me some hours later. He said, ‘You want this shrapnel as a souvenir?’ I said, ‘Throw it away,’ and I never saw it again. I met his son, who was also a doctor, at Buckingham Palace eighty years later. He told me that if the shrapnel was a quarter inch deeper, it would have cut a main artery and that was it.
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Going home.
The fellah in the next bed said to me, ‘If he writes anything in that book on the table, a green book, you’re for Blighty.’ Well I didn’t believe him, and then some hours later somebody came in, they called my name, my number. I was out on the Red Cross truck down to Rouen … And there we had a bath, got rid of the lice, they burnt our clothing. We could see the hospital ship. We were out on the hospital ship, but never sailed that night. There was a rumour of a submarine in the Channel. We sailed the next night and came to Southampton. I think if I had gone to the field dressing main station, I don’t think I ever would [have sailed]. It was the fact that it was the advanced dressing station and they wanted the beds. Get rid of him.
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THE LAST THREE INTERVIEWS REGARDING HARRY PATCH.
Mutiny.
‘E’ company were about a thousand strong. We had an officer we didn’t like. He used to take us out route marches. We didn’t like it. That afternoon he wanted the ‘E’ company on parade for bayonet practice. The war had been over for months. The sergeant major opened the door. Somebody threw a boot at him. He went back, reported it.
The officer came and they told him flat that they weren’t going out on parade. Well, he went back to the company office and about thirty of the men followed him and they asked for him. He came out, he pulled his revolver out and he clicked the hammer back. Nobody said anything. We had all been on the range.
I was on fatigue that morning so I wasn’t on parade. Nobody said anything.
They all went back to their huts and they rounded up what ammunition they could and went back and they asked for the officer again. He was a captain, risen from the ranks. He came out and he clicked the hammer back on his revolver. He said, ‘The first man who says he is not going on parade, I’ll shoot him.’ No sooner had he said that, when thirty bolts went back and somebody shouted, ‘Now shoot you bugger if you like.’ He threw the revolver down, disappeared. We were all run up for a mutiny.
We had a brigadier come over from the mainland to hear the officer’s side of it. Then he said, ‘I want to hear the men.’ Twenty or thirty of the men went behind a screen and they told him. They said, ‘We don’t want bayonet practice. We’ve had the real bloody thing. Some of us are wounded by bayonets.’ The outcome was that there were no parades except just to clear the camp, just fatigues. The officer was moved to a different command. We never saw him again. It’s a damn good job we didn’t.
The price of war.
It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe, nothing to it. I would have taken the Kaiser, his son, Hitler and the people on his side … and bloody shot them. Out the way and saved millions of lives. T’isn’t worth it.
Breaking the silence.
Opposite my bedroom there is a window and there is a light over the top. Now [when the staff go into that room] they put the light on. If I was half asleep – the light coming on was the flash of a bomb. That flash brought it all back.
For eighty years I’ve never watched a war film, I never spoke of it, not to my wife. For six years, I’ve been here [in the nursing home]. Six years it’s been nothing but World War One. As I say, World War One is history, it isn’t news. Forget it.
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The link below covers interviews with 5 more Service Men, very touching.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/last_tommy_gallery_01.shtml
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WE WILL REMEMBER THEM <3
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Brightsolid must have only purchased a few Poppies as there is only 1 on here and 1 on FMP.
Pushes thread back to the top.
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All the Fine Young Men - Eric Bogle
They told all the fine young men of when this war is over
There will be peace and the peace will last forever
In Flanders Field, at Lone Pine and Bersheeba
For king and country, for honour and duty
The young men fought and cursed and wept and died
They told all the fine young men of when this war is over
In your country's grateful heart we will cherish you forever
At Tobruk and Alamein, at Bhuna and Kokoda
Like their fathers before, in a world mad with war
The young men fought and cursed and wept and died
For many of those fine young men all the wars are over
They have found peace, it's the peace that lasts forever
When the call comes again they will not answer
They're just forgotten bones lying far from their homes
As forgotten as the cause for which they died
Ah young men, can you see now why they lied
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgpiQF_ulzM
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There is plenty to remember on Remembrance Day,
At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, I say,
The November wind blows strong, the dark clouds hang low,
The parade begins and moves so slow,
The sea of veterans march proud and tall,
Army, navy, and air force, they represent them all,
Their medals for service shine brightly you see,
They have each come here, because they fought for me,
The crowd stands solemn as they proudly march past,
We quietly clap to say "thank you" at last,
This sea of soldiers, pilots, nurses and doctors moves on,
Each remembering the friends, comrades, and family whom are already gone,
As the trumpet plays "The Last Post", you can see the tears,
That shows the pain and horror of all those years,
The sorrow and sadness of memories of friends they’ve lost,
Is etched on the lines of their faces, such a tremendous cost,
As this parade of veterans gets smaller each year,
It’s my generation’s responsibility to remember the fear,
Thanks to them we live in a country with freedom to live,
We must never ever forget what they each had to give.
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Thank You Soldiers.
For us to remember
Your honour is marked this day
Soldiers united by war
With your lives, you had to pay.
November 11, forever in our hearts
Memories for old and young
Your world has ended
For us, another has begun.
Youth must remember
What your fight was for
Lest we forget
And start another war.
Thank you soldiers for the sacrifices you made
Thank you soldiers for being so brave.
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GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
On Veteran's Day
We all must say
We remember the brave
And all the ones that gave
Their lives their blood
For countryhood
But don't despair
We remember them by the poppies we wear
Where they now lay
Is where they must stay
Gone but not forgotten.
~~~~~~~~~~
REMEMBRANCE DAY
The sun has set
Below the hills
The sounds of guns
Forever still
Not long ago
The battles raged
And many died
Of tender age
They fought for country
To protect
The way of life
We all respect
Now we gather
To recall
The sacrifices
Paid by all.
~~~~~~~~~~~
NOVEMBER 11th
In the years of the war
Brave men left to fight
For the lives of others
For the human right.
They all left their families
And marched through the door
To act for their country
To be in the war.
They fought for then
And they fought for us now
Most of them died
Thought it's a wonder how.
Because they did all for the benefit
Of our country today.
So on November 11th
Our remembrance we pay.
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM <3
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They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
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We had no common bond, save that of youth,
No shared ambition, except to venture and survive, until,
aloft within that roaming fuselage, we found in wars intensity,
good cause to say with pride in later years to those who chronicled the great events.
We flew in Lancaters.
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I cannot see a Remembrance Poppy on the home page yet.
Shaun
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On the 27th Oct the Community Manage posted that they had asked for the Poppy to be added.
Seems we members aren't the only ones not be listened to. :-(
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Shaun there is a poppy on the top of this page.
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The poppy has been on GR since at least 7 pm on Nov 4th
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The poppy was put one at about 10.43am on the 4th, albeit very small so some members may not spot it easily.
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it's much larger than the one they put on FMP :-D
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