Y5 Comprehension 18 th

January 2016

Y5 COMPREHENSION

How did Harry

Patch become
an unlikely
WW1 hero?
 Y5 Comprehension 18 th
January 2016

How did Harry Patch become an unlikely

hero of WW1?
Section One:
Harry's story

Harry Patch was an ordinary soldier of the First

World War. Like many who fought, he was conscripted (that means he was told that he had to
join the army) and sent to the trenches of the Western Front, where he was wounded at the
Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. Passchendaele (which is a
really hard word to spell) is in Belgium, very close to the
city of Ypres. The Battle of Passchendaele is also
known as the Third Battle of Ypres.

Unlike many, Harry lived on until the age of 111, by

which time he had become the last British
survivor of the World War One trenches.

Harry did not like to talk about his experiences in the

war. He certainly didn’t consider himself to be anyone
special or important. However, when he died in 2009,
over 1,000 people, including important people from
around the world, attended his funeral.

When war broke out, it wasn’t ordinary ‘Tommies’

who were seen as seen as ‘heroes-in-waiting.’ Instead
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January 2016

it was a very different type of soldier who had already captured the public
imagination.

Section Two: Men of their time

When the war started in 1914, the public held certain commanders and generals of
the British Army in very high esteem!

The valiant defender – Robert Baden Powell

Robert Baden-Powell was a commander of an army base (known as a ‘garrison’) in a
town called Mafeking in South Africa. During a war fought against the South African
people in 1899 (known as the Boer War), Robert Baden-Powell and his men
successfully defended their garrison for 217 days against an enemy siege. Stories of
his exploits were reported back at home and made him famous. Baden-Powell later
founded the scouting movement, based on his experiences in South Africa.

The charismatic leader – Lord

Kitchener
At the beginning of the First World War, Lord
Herbert Horatio Kitchener was already famous for
leading British forces to a famous victory in the
African country of Sudan in 1898. As Secretary of
State for war he used his fame and face to front a
recruitment campaign to swell the ranks of the
armed forces. Thousands would have recognised
him, and thousands answered his call.

The sacrificial hero – Rupert

Brooke
Rupert Brooke’s poem 'The Soldier' was published in
January 1915, with World War One just a few
months old. Its famous lines - ‘If I should die, think
only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field, that is for ever England’ -
embodied a noble and classical ideal of sacrifice in war.
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January 2016

Section Three: Harry Patch's medals

The medals awarded to Harry Patch - from service in World War One to a fireman

during the Blitz in World War Two - tell the story of how, over time, the British Army
started to recognise the bravery of more and more people and not just the Officers
and Generals.

Section Four: The new WW1 hero

Fragile heroes
In the last few decades we have found out more about individuals like Harry Patch,
who didn’t necessarily do heroic or exceptional deeds, but just endured tremendous
suffering – and never once complained about it.

‘Birdsong’, is the title of a very famous book written by an author called Sebastian
Faulks. It tells the story of two men who worked as tunnelers during WW1. They dug
tunnels beneath the trenches in an attempt to attack the Germans in a different
(more sneaky) way. ‘Birdsong’ focuses on the emotional impact the war had on many
of the soldiers who fought in it. When you are older you should read this book. It has
one of the best endings of any book ever written.
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January 2016

New perspectives
The 100 year anniversary (also known as a centenary) of the outbreak of the First
World War in 2014 has provided an opportunity to rethink the way the war is
remembered. Storytellers have searched for new perspectives (this means, a new way
of thinking about something) and new kinds of heroes. BBC television drama ‘The
Crimson Field’ views the battle in the trenches through the experiences of women
working in the hospitals just behind the line. Their sacrifice and service is explored
alongside that of the soldiers they treat.

Section Five: Who are the

heroes of WW1?
World War One presented many opportunities
for individuals to show different kinds heroism.
Who should we remember as a World War One
hero?

Professor Mary Beard,

historian
The idea of “heroism” was invented by the
ancient Greeks – who found it as tricky an idea
as we do. Could anyone become a hero? Did you
have to be long dead to be a hero? Could
women be heroes? Was heroism seen only in
battle, or in everyday life too? Were there
heroes among the enemy? This question is
raised in a famous epic poem called ‘The Iliad’,
written almost 3,000 years ago by a famous
poet called Homer. The Iliad is about the first Great War of history, between the
Greeks and the Trojans.

The Iliad was in my mind when I visited St Symphorien

Cemetery – the joint Commonwealth and German burial
ground in Belgium.

It contains the grave of the first man to be awarded a

Victoria Cross in World War One, Lieutenant Maurice
Dease; and also the grave of a German soldier, Musketeer
Oskar Neimeyer, who died on the same day, after
extraordinary feats of bravery. I couldn’t help thinking
that – whatever their views on the war in which they
served and died - these were heroes, both of them; not to
mention, as I feel sure, the sons of heroic mothers.
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January 2016

(Maurice Dease, pictured left, was killed in the first year of the War – 1914 – at the
age of 24).

Dr Stephen Clarke, The Royal British Legion

My selection is a group of men who took part in the war - stretcher bearers. I come
from New Zealand where a stretcher bearer called John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his
donkey Duffy are part of the Anzac legend after they made many fearless rescues at
Gallipoli. He was killed by machine gun fire.

I have a personal link to stretcher bearers as my great grandfather Sergeant Edward

Dillon was in the field ambulance. A diary entry he wrote on 15 September, 1916,
shows how he and his unit displayed heroic qualities at The Somme: ‘I got our patient
in a shell hole and started to dress the wounds... We just started and Fritz must have
spotted us for he played on his machine gun in good style for about twenty minutes,
we had our noses well in the mud… The remainder of the squad still searched for
wounded soldiers.’

I think the compassion and comradeship that these men showed makes them as much
heroes as their bravery under fire does.

Professor Alison Fell, historian

Dr Elsie Inglis was a Scottish doctor. In 1914, aged 49 and
with 16 years of hospital experience, she offered her
services to the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), but was
turned down because the Government didn’t think that
women should be involved on the front line. (In fact the War
Office actually told her to ‘go home and sit still’).

However, like another famous nurse - Mary Seacole - Inglis

raised the money herself and set up the Scottish Women's
Hospitals for Foreign Service, which ran field hospitals in
France, Serbia, Turkey and Russia. They performed
extraordinarily valuable work in some of the most difficult
circumstances. Inglis was fighting battles on more than one
front during the war: she was fighting to save the lives
threatened by wounds and disease, and to prove women doctors could do wartime
medical work as well as men.

Now answer these questions:

1 During which battle of WW1 was Harry Patch wounded? (Section One)
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January 2016

2 The Battle of Passchendaele is also known as what? (Section One)

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3 Why do you think lots of people from around the world attended Harry’s
funeral in 2009? (Section One)
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4 Which three word phrase at the end of Section One means a person
who is expected to behave like a hero in the very near future?
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5 What does it mean if you hold someone in high esteem? (Section Two)
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6 What did Robert Baden-Powell do in South Africa in 1899 that made him
very famous back home in Britain? (Section Two)
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7 What were the posters with Lord Kitchener’s face on used for? (Section
Two)
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8 To which group of people was the WW2 Defence Medal awarded?

(Section Three)
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9 A 100 year anniversary is also known as what? (Section Four)

___________________________________________________________________

10 Which group of people does Dr Stephen Clarke think are heroes of

WW1? (Section 5)
___________________________________________________________________

11 Why can Elsie Inglis be compared to another famous nurse, Mary

Seacole? (Section Five)
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