Just over 3 years ago Harry Patch, the last British soldier alive who had fought in World War One, died aged 111. While he is known as 'The Last Tommy', he has very strong views about war, its morals and the governments that cause war. After meeting a 107 year old Germany veteran of World War One, Patch had this to day:
"It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Herr Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"
This is the view held by many around the world and no one has the right to say this more than Patch himself. he believes that war is not moral, whatever the reasons, and killing in war is murder all the same. He is angry that he was forced to spend years of his life in the horrible conditions in the trenches, while being forced to kill those who he did not even know, for reasons that he hardly understood. The last line sums it up nicely, after millions of lives lost, it was all resolved over a table on a train. What was the need for it all...?
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