Free Republic

Friends remember last survivor of the trenches, who died last month at the age of 111, in service at Wells cathedral... They said it many different ways, but the message was essentially the same. In most respects, Henry John "Harry" Patch was an ordinary man...But just about everyone who attended Patch's funeral service in the cathedral city of Wells today also seemed to agree that, somehow, he had become something quite extraordinary. It was not just that he became the last man to remember, first hand, the horrors of the first world war trenches, but also that he became both...

MAJJAR, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqis said on Wednesday that anger over weapons searches in private homes triggered the killing of six British soldiers and the wounding of eight others in clashes around this southern Shi'ite town this week. But a British military spokesman in Iraq, Lieutenant-Colonel Ronnie McCourt, said the killing of the six military police in Majjar on Tuesday was unprovoked, adding: "It was murder."