Harry Patch is the last surviving First World War ‘Tommy’ to have seen action.

At the battle of Passchendaele, serving as a Lewis gunner, he shot a German soldier who was only yards away from bayoneting him. Being a man who could truly see ‘the pity of war’ and a crack shot, Harry fired a burst into the man’s legs to bring him down in the hope of only wounding him.

Harry is 110, and didn’t even talk about his exploits in WW I until the 1990s. In World War II, he served with the auxiliary fire service in Bath, his hometown, where once again he was attacked, this time by a Luftwaffe bomber that strafed him.