Horror In The Mud: What Was It Like To Fight At Ypres? | The Last Voices of World War One | Timeline

Harry Patch was completely correct, and voiced the view of many WW1 veterans. My great grandfather had served at The Somme and Passchendaele with the 4th Territorial Battalion of The Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI). My great grandfather said this, in future leave the soldiers and civilians out of it. Take the Kings and the Kaisers, put boxing gloves on them, put them in a ring, and let them sort it out between themselves. Why should the common man be killed and maimed for the likes of those who should know better how to conduct themselves?

113 YEARS OLD- 1 of the blokes lived from 1896-2009. What an incredible life to live through all those changes!!!

My great grandad served in ww1, we believe at Passchendaele and possibly The Somme. He was buried by mud but managed to survive and come home and many years later have my grandma, his brother however, died. I never met my great grandad but I want him to know how proud I am, we all are of him and his brother and everyone who served. “All gave some, some gave all.” Love you great grandad and your brother. Thank you 🙏🏻 x

" A terrible waste of young men's lives " , from the lips of a gentleman who lost 3 of his best friends 80 years earlier. He never forgot them. May they all Rest in Peace, together again, in Heaven .

Something about 100 year old veterans still having soldier humor makes them loveable

I used to work with Mr. Mac in a petrol station. He was a private in 1914 and a Major in 1945. He said he would volunteer to go over the top on raids to get away from the smell of sewage. Salute to Major Mac.

Re: 3:30 USA-The early 1980's found me working as a janitor within a Veterans Administration hospital. One of the patients was a man in his eighties who did not sleep well. We talked some, he explained that the worst of his nightmares from the Great War were of the horses screaming in terror.

I really appreciate hearing the first hand accounts from the soldiers who were there. You can read it from books and watch it in film but you can see the memories in his eyes and the pain in his voice when the veteran recounts his experiences of war. God save us, the human race still has yet to learn the useless waste of war.

You cannot even begin to imagine what these poor souls went through ❤.

Im from Ypres, and the horror men from both sides had to endure, is beyond believe. The loss of lives for nothing still makes me angry. We will always respect and pay tribute to them. They shall not be forgotten.

When i was younger, i was enthralled and horrified by these war stories. Now I'm a man, im absolutely bloody furious that this happend, it's an absolute bloody disgrace that young men and boy were knowingly sent to be slaughtered in some kind of perverse ritual. Shame on the people responsible, may they and their families forever endure the pain they inflicted on the innocents.

My grandad Hugh Walker(Liverpool), was killed on The Somme, July 1916, he left a widow and 3 young kids, they lived in abject poverty for many years, his name is commorated on the roll of honor in Liverpool Town Hall along with 15 thousand other men, thats not a typo, 15 thousand men from one city, may they all rest in peace.

My great grandfather, John Dalton was killed here, my grandfather remembered his mom getting the telegram. They never found his body but hi cousin saw him go down. My grandfather fought in WW2, came back a different man, the ramifications of this have even effected my generation of the family. What was all the death and suffering for, nothing has been learnt by those in power. They were basically seen as expendable. I still feel so much sadness thinking of him being lost there.

The world needs to listen to these men and those from the war that followed this one. I feel like we're on the edge of such horror again.

My heart breaks to hear them. I am so grateful for the ones who had the foresight to get their stories told before they passed on. God Bless all military people that fight and chance giving their lives for wars they did not start.

I’m ex British Army, one can’t even imagine what it was like, the term “shell shock” was coined, symptoms rarely even seen or likely to be seen, such as as the amount of ordinance fired at each other. My great grandfather was deeply affected by the 4 years he witnessed, and was troubled for the rest of his life.

Hearing Harry Patch talk even now is haunting, they mourn friends and feel anger at their pointless deaths. Thanks and remembrance will never be enough.

My grandfather was a Lewis gunner, wounded three times and gassed twice. Like Mr Bowie, the gas affected him for the rest of his life - I always remember him coughing and bringing up phlegm. However, like most of the soldiers, he never spoke of his war, but after he died we found, amongst his effects, a rosary which must have belonged to one of his pals (he himself was not a Catholic). He must have kept it secretly for 50 odd years. I wish I could have found out more about his experiences - all I could do was go to the cemeteries and battlefields of France and Belgium and be so overcome by the sheer numbers of the fallen. But at least he did come home, unlike that nameless pal of his, who was probably one of his Lewis gun team.

Bless these men.

WW1 is such a massive conflict in everyone's minds because it was the first war in history where actual footage and photographs could be taken. Not only that, but a fair few veterans lived well into the modern age and could account for the horrors they'd seen to a modern generation. The conditions these men faced and the horrors they witnessed are incomparable to what any modern man I feel could endure. Cut from a different far tougher kind of cloth. Nothing but respect for these men for everything they put themselves through. I think Harry Patch summed it up best. "War is meaningless violence, nothing else"