from here:

Henry John Patch ... born, on June 17, 1898,... The last survivor of Passchendaele, that three-month orgy of blood-letting in the mud of Flanders which began 90 years ago this month and commemorated by the Queen at Tyne Cot cemetery in Belgium today. ... Between the start of the campaign on July 31 and its end on November 8, an average of 5,000 men a day were killed or wounded, and all for the capture of a few miles of desecrated land. ... His membership of that steadily diminishing band of British veterans of the war to end all wars has earned him audiences with the Queen and the French Légion d'honneur. A few years ago he was taken to meet a German veteran who had fought opposite him in Flanders. "Nice old chap. A pacifist. Same as me. Why did they suffer, those millions of men?"