Dubbed 'the last fighting Tommy', Harry Patch was buried last week after a public remembrance service at Wells Cathedral. Such occasions can't help but stir feelings of patriotism within even the most pacifistic of citizens, but rather than glorify it we should always keep in mind the true horror of what war actually is.

I can't help but feel that when we're sitting on our sofas watching a war film, or standing in a crowd watching a colourful military parade we are somehow doing an injustice to those who were sent out into foreign fields to die in the most gruesome circumstances. It is one thing to honour the memory of the fallen, but to go so far as to almost glorify slaughter and killing seems to me to be doing a great disservice to the memory of the millions of people, many conscripted, who have served in our armed forces over the years.

Nothing demonstrates the horror of war better than some of Harry's own words - so next time you see an MOD recruitment advert or a vainglorious military history documentary, bare in mind the words of a man who saw armed conflict first hand:

"It wasn't worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands."

"When you look at it, why did they die?" - looking out over a nearly endless sea of white military gravestones

"Opposite my bedroom there is a window and there is a light over the top. Now when the staff go into that room they put the light on. If I was half asleep the light coming on was the flash of a bomb. That flash brought it all back. For eighty years I've never watched a war film, I never spoke of it, not to my wife. For six years, I've been here [in the nursing home]. Six years it's been nothing but World War One."

Talking, during an interview, about a comrade - "He died. I held his hand for the last thirty seconds of his life [wipes away a tear]."

"Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims."