Church planning to honour hero Harry

The Last Tommy - Harry Patch - is to be remembered at the Shropshire church where he married.

Plans are progressing to install a plaque in memory of Mr Patch at Holy Trinity Church in Hadley.

His funeral was held yesterday in Wells, Somerset, the city where he lived in his advancing years.

He was the last surviving British soldier to have fought in the World War One trenches before his death on July 25, aged 111. Mr Patch used to live in Telford and married his first wife Ada in Hadley in 1919.

Vicar of Holy Trinity the Reverend Vaughan Sweet said: "We're looking at putting up a small commemorative plaque. Mr Patch is part of the local history."

Mr Sweet is seeking permission from the diocese to install a plaque in the church, while Hadley and Leegomery Parish Council is looking at funding the memorial."

Council chairman Pat Smart said: "A couple of local residents said it would be a good idea to have some sort of plaque to commemorate the fact Mr Patch got married at the church. It's an important link which really touches the hand of history because he survived all those years."

Councillor Smart said she would ask the council to fund the plaque on September 1.

Yesterday royalty, senior military figures and ordinary men and women joined together to say farewell to Mr Patch.

Peace and reconciliation was the theme of the service as representatives from Germany, Belgium and France took part. Mr Patch was then buried in a private service at Monkton Coombe Church, near Bath.

The 111-year-old served as an assistant gunner in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, where half a million men died.

After the death of Henry Allingham, aged 113, on July 18, Mr Patch was briefly the oldest man in Europe .

Mr Patch's great nephew David Tucker, of Devizes, Wiltshire, who carried his medals and decorations behind his coffin, said: "I felt I was carrying the medals of all those who fought in the Great War."