Harry patch ww1 biography of barack
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Harry Patch digital art fronts forces charity's WWI commemorations
A digital artwork using the voice of the last British survivor of the World War I trenches has been created by a UK forces charity to mark its WWI commemorations.
Harry Patch lived in Wells, Somerset, and died in July 2009 aged 111.
The work, for the Not Forgotten Association (NFA), shows a portrait of Mr Patch being painted stroke-by-stroke with music by Radiohead's Thom Yorke.
It is the first in a series depicting war through the eyes of veterans.
The multimedia work, external was inspired by a photograph taken by award-winning photographer and former Taunton-based 40 Commando Royal Marine, Giles Price.
Mr Price said he had been helped by the charity itself after being injured in Iraq in 1991 and taking part in the project had been "of huge importance".
Harry Patch was conscripted into the Army aged 18 and fought in the Battle of Passchendaele at Ypres in 1917 in which more than 70,000 British soldiers died.
He was a machine-gunner in the trenches and served as a private.
His portrait was painted by London-based artist David Tucker in oils before being digitally deconstructed until all 2,671 brush strokes had became an individual layer.
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WWI veteran remembered for ‘peace’
‘Symbol of bravery’
Members of the royal family, senior government and General Richard Dannat, Britain’s army chief, joined friends and family for Thursday’s memorial service.
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“Today marks the passing of a generation, and of a man who dedicated his final years to spreading the message of peace and reconciliation,” Kevan Jones, Britain’s veterans minister, said at the service.
“Active participation in the Great War is now no longer part of living memory in this country, but Harry Patch will continue to be a symbol of the bravery and sacrifice shown by him and those he served with.”
Patch, who was nicknamed “The Last Tommy”, only began talking about his experience of trench warfare when he turned 100, in an attempt to promote peace.
“War isn’t worth one life,” he had said, and described the battlefield as “mud, mud and more mud mixed together with blood”.
“All over the battlefield the wounded were lying down, English and German all asking for help. We weren’t like the Good Samaritan in the Bible, we were the robbers who passed and left them. You couldn’t help them,” he said.
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The veteran also said he never killed anyone in combat, but had shot
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Funeral of Beset Patch
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