Radiohead have made available a new song for paid download at their Dead Air Space website. The song, "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" is, you guessed it, a tribute to the memory of Harry Patch, the last surviving World War I combat soldier, who died at age 111 on July 25 and will be buried tomorrow. The download will cost £1 (appx. $1.70), with all proceeds going to the UK veterans' charity the Royal British Legion. It can also be streamed via the BBC.
Patch, a plumber by trade, has long been a national figure in the UK. Known as "the last Tommy"-- a reference to a nickname given to British WWI soldiers-- Patch served from 1916-18, fighting on the battlefields of France in 1917. In the years after the war, Patch would survive two wives, a third female companion, both of his sons, and virtually his entire generation-- at the time of his death he was the third-oldest living man in the world. After decades of avoiding discussing the war, Patch, at age 100, became a sharp critic of WWI, and war in general, calling it "legalized mass murder" and comparing trench dogs picking over the dead bodies of the fallen to supposedly civilized nations like Britain and Germany fighting in the dirt of France. The lyrics to "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" are, in fact, all quotes from Patch himself.
Even then, Patch was acutely aware of his fortunes and humble about his position as a living symbol to one of the most important moments in European history. In 2007, at a visit to a Flemish war memorial, he expressed how frankly mind-blowing it must feel to have gone off to war, as tens of millions of people had in those years, and nearly a century later to be the last man standing. "Any one of them could have been me," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Millions of men came to fight in this war and I find it incredible that I am the only one left."
There are now only three verified surviving World War I veterans.
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