[ book tip by Dianne Brown ] Harry Patch is a very ordinary yet also an extraordinary man. Son, brother, husband, father, Mr Patch the builder, Uncle Henry. Born into a prosperous working family in a quiet village, he worked hard to get qualified, find a good job and marry, and do the best he could, as most of us try, to live a decent life. His retirement was busy with local causes, helping his friends and neighbours and enjoying his caravan holidays.

So ordinary, so normal. So why this memoir? The extraordinary thing about Harry is that he is 110, and is the last surviving British soldier from World War One. He is the last solid figure in front of that vast shadowy army we only now see in films or pictures. I nearly didn't read this book because I thought it would be yet another story of the bravery, but misery of blood and mud in the trenches. But this memoir has brought out that the soldiers were just ordinary people, and to men like Harry, who survived, the war was an episode, not their whole lives.  

Harry does not  define himself just as an ex-soldier , and neither should we. The interest to me was in the story of life in Edwardian England, the life of a community to whom the Titanic was only a newspaper  story and a coronation just something that happened in London. An ordinary life isn't the same as a boring life.

[ Favourite quote ] 'What is the secret of a long life? No idea'

[ book info ] Patch, Harry: The Last Fighting Tommy. The life of Harry Patch, the only surviving veteran of the trenches. (Book language: English) Richard Van Emden. Bloomsbury, London, 2008 (2008). ISBN: 978-0-7475-9336-2.