Mourning Britain's Oldest War Vet

Harry Patch, the last British soldier to fight in World War I, was laid to rest on Thursday. Patch served as an assistant gunner in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in the Battle of the Passchendaele in 1917—when he was just 20 years-old. Born in June of 1989, Patch died last month at the age of 111. Before his death, Patch requested that the pallbearers carrying his coffin would be the same age as he when he fought in the trenches of the First World War. And on Thursday, those young men marched with his coffin—draped with the red, white, and blue Union flag—past thousands of Britons who lined the streets. The tone of the funeral was, however, not one of military glory or conquest, but of peace. A chorister sang the peace anthem of the 1960s, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," which Patch's grandson chose "to reflect Harry's view of the futility of war."