"the last Tommy"

The WWI medals of the last Tommy are now on display in a museum in Cornwall.

Harry Patch, who died last month aged 111, fought in the trenches with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry.

Before he died, he said that he wanted his eight medals to be permanently shown at the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry Regimental Museum in Bodmin.

Major Trevor Stipling, curator at the museum, said: “We're very pleased and very proud.

"He wanted them to go on permanent display for the public to see rather than being put away at the back of a drawer where nobody would see them.

"We saw him regularly at our rally days and he made several donations to the museum.

"He never spoke much about the actual battlefields but he always had a yarn – his yarns were really amazing."

The medals, which include the British War Medal, the Allied Victory Medal and two French Legion d’Honneur awards, will be displayed in a special centrepiece case until October, when they will be displayed among other medals won by soldiers from the same regiment.