For the ‘Last Tommy’ Harry Patch, who watched his friends killed in muddy trenches and battlefields of the first world war, the enemy was not the Germans but war itself.

The former soldier, who died peacefully in his bed this morning aged 111, never forgot the horrors he'd lived through.

Until today he was the last witness to life and death in the mud-soaked trenches, where soldiers, many just boys as he was, endured appalling conditions amid an endless barrage of gunfire and mortars.

More than 15 million people died in the war and he was very nearly among them.

Patch was only 18 when he signed up as a private in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. Born Henry Patch in Combe Down, Somerset, on June 17 1898, he'd been training as a plumber when the war broke out.

Six months later he found himself being shipped out to France to serve on the Western Front.

As the number two in the Lewis gun team, his role was to carry and assemble the spare parts for the machine gun and ensure it worked.

Concerned he would be breaking one of the ten commandments by killing another soldier Patch made a pact with his fellow gunners to aim for the enemies' legs.

In June 1917 he fought in the Battle of Passchendaele, or Third Battle of Ypres, in which 70,000 were killed.

Years later Patch would recall the terrifying experience of being ordered out the trenches into no-man’s land saying: "If any man tells you he went over the top and he wasn't scared, he's a damn liar."

He survived the battle but soon after tragedy brought an end to his service.

On the night of 22 September 1917 a German shell exploded over his trench, killing his three closest friends and badly wounding Patch.

He was sent back to the UK to recover and never returned.

Marrying his first wife Ada Billington in 1918 he settled back into life as a plumber, up until his retirement in 1963.

The couple had two sons Dennis and Roy, both of whom he outlived.

Ada died in 1976 and aged 81 he married his second wife, Jean, who died in 2004. His third partner, Doris, who lived in the same nursing home as him, died last year.

It was only on his 100th birthday that Mr Patch first came to the spotlight when, for the first time, reporters and television crews visited his care home in Wells, Somerset.

The 2007 publication of his autobiography The Last Fighting Tommy made him one of the oldest authors ever and he was regularly interviewed about his experiences by historians and documentary makers.

Last year he was honoured with a poem by poet laureate Andrew Motion called the ‘Five Acts of Harry Patch’ and even featured in mens' magazine FHM as an agony uncle.

Yet despite the fame and admiration his status as survivor brought him, Patch was more keen on highlighting all those who hadn’t made it back from the trenches.

He condemned war as “organised murder” adding: “It was not worth it, it was not worth one let alone all the millions.

“It’s important that we remember the war dead on both sides of the line - the Germans suffered the same as we did.”

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