Sunday, July 26, 2009

Harry Patch : War Is "The Calculated And Condoned Slaughter Of Human Beings"



Harry Patch, the last veteran of World War One's European slaughter has died, aged 111.

Here was a man who knew better than most that war is about one thing above all else - depopulation, of all sides.

From Your New Reality, July 2007 :

Harry Patch remains haunted by the Battle of Passchendaele, where three thousand young Britons were killed or wounded every single day, for almost 100 days straight.

Harry Patch's comments should be etched in the stone of every war memorial :

"Too many died. War isn't worth one life," said Mr Patch.

He said war was the "calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings".

During the three months of fighting Harry Patch experienced in France in 1917, the heaviest rains in 30 years churned mud so thick, men and horses drowned in it.

Mr Patch also paid his respects to the tens of thousands of young Germans who died in the same fields as his friends.
"The Germans suffered the same as we did," he said.

Harry Patch commenting during a ceremony at a Flanders field war cemetery, July 2007:
“Any one of them could have been me. Millions of men came to fight in this war and I find it incredible that I am the only one left."
And now there are none.

Harry Patch's Memories Of The Flanders Battlefield