The Last Tommy - Harry Patch - The Last Tommy

Documentary telling the stories of Britain's last surviving First World War veterans, known as Tommies. Harry Patch was the last British veteran who fought in the trenches during the First World War. When he laid down his rifle at the end of the war in November 1918, he hoped never to see another shot fired in anger. Twenty years later he was under attack again, this time when a German bomber strafed him while he worked as a fireman during air raids on Bath in 1941. Harry and five other remarkable First World War veterans, all in their second century at the time of recording, describe their lives after the Armistice of November 1918. Arthur Halestrap survived the war unscathed, but almost died during the outbreak of Spanish flu in 1918. He worked in British army intelligence during the Second World War, and had to endure the death of his son, an RAF pilot. Claude Choules witnessed the German navy in Scapa Flow scuttling dozens of ships rather than handing them over to the victorious British. He went on to start a new life in Australia. Sandy Young was forced to find work abroad during the Great Depression in the 1920s. He ended up in Borneo, where he was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese in 1942. Bill Stone stayed in the Royal Navy after the First World War, and helped evacuate British troops from the beaches of Dunkirk while the ships around his vessel were torpedoed and bombed out of the water. By 2005, these six characters were among the final few left from the six million British and Commonwealth soldiers who served during the Great War. In 2009 Harry Patch became the last fighting Tommy, the sole link with an extraordinary era. Having witnessed the horrors of trench warfare, Harry became a passionate advocate for peace in his final years.