Harry Patch was born in the town of Combe Down, Bath. Patch left school in 1913, and became a plumber in Bath. In October 1916, he became a private into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, serving as an assistant gunner in a Lewis Gun section. Patch arrived in France in June 1917. He fought at the Battle of Passchendaele and was injured in the groin when a shell exploded overhead at 22:30 on 22 September 1917, killing three of his comrades. He was removed from the front line and returned to England on 23 December 1917.
Harry patch said "When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a horrific battle – thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. 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?"
After the war, Harry returned to work as a plumber, during which time he spent four years working on the Wills Memorial Building in Bristol, before becoming manager of the plumbing company's branch in Bristol. A year above the age to be called up for military service at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, he became a part-time fireman in Bath, dealing with the Baedeker raids. Later in the war he moved to Street, Somerset where he ran a plumbing company until his retirement at age 65.In 1918, Patch married Ada Billington, who died in 1976. They had two sons, Dennis, who died in 1984, and Roy, who died in 2002. At age 81 he married his second wife, Jean, who died in 1984. His third partner, Doris, who lived in the same nursing home as him, died in 2007....