Last man left alive from Great War
THE last surviving veteran to fight in the trenches during the First World War celebrated his 109th birthday yesterday - but insisted it was no big deal.
Harry Patch marked the day with a party at his nursing home in Wells, Somerset.
He served with the Duke of Cornwall's light infantry and fought at the bloody battle of Passchendaele, when he was still just a teenage conscript.
Mr Patch said: "I feel about 50 years old. It's a lot of fuss about nothing."
He was called up in 1917 and just a few weeks later he was thrown into one of the bloodiest and most brutal battles of the Great War - at Passchendaele, in Belgium - which claimed 70,000 lives.
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Weather for Edinburgh
Thursday 16 February 2012
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