Harry Patch, WWI survivor

LONDON - Harry Patch, Britain's last survivor of the trenches of World War I, was a reluctant soldier who became a powerful eyewitness to the horror of war, and a symbol of a lost generation.

Mr. Patch, who died Saturday at 111, was wounded in 1917 in the Battle of Passchendaele, which he remembered as "mud, mud, and more mud mixed together with blood."

"Anyone who tells you that in the trenches they weren't scared, he's a damned liar: You were scared all the time," he was quoted as saying in The Last Fighting Tommy, a book written with historian Richard van Emden.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the entire country would mourn "the passing of a great man."

"The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten," Brown said.

Queen Elizabeth II said that "we will never forget the bravery and enormous sacrifice of his generation."

Britain's Ministry of Defense called Mr. Patch the last British military survivor of the 1914-18 war, though British-born Claude Choules of Australia, 108, is believed to have served in the Royal Navy during the conflict.

Mr. Patch was one of the last links to "the war to end all wars," which killed about 20 million people in years of fighting between the Allied Powers - including Britain, France, and the United States - and Germany and its allies. The Ministry of Defense said Mr. Patch was the last soldier of any nationality to have fought in the brutal trench warfare that has become the enduring image of the conflict.

No French or German veterans of the war remain alive. The last known U.S. veteran is Frank Buckles of Charles Town, W.Va., 108, who drove ambulances in France for the U.S. Army.

Mr. Patch did not speak about his war experiences until he was 100. Once he did, he was adamant that the slaughter he had witnessed had not been justified.

"I met someone from the German side, and we both shared the same opinion: We fought, we finished, and we were friends," he said in 2007. "It wasn't worth it."

After the war ended, Mr. Patch returned to work as a plumber, married, and raised a family. He outlived three wives and both of his sons.