Our Final Witness
Connecting the last living veterans of World War Two with the children of the 2020s
Learn MoreAbout the Project
Our Final Witness bridges two generations, enabling a conversation between them at the last moment in time it will be possible.
Our Purpose
Our purpose is two-fold:
- Questions: We are collecting questions from children aged 8 to 18 from across the UK. These questions form one side of the conversation. What do our youth want to know about the lives and livelihoods of the generation who beat the Axis, survived the Blitz, and founded the UN? We will collect these questions from as many children as possible, collating them and classifying them by theme.
- Answers: We will ask these questions to as many surviving veterans as possible. We will conduct interviews both in-person and virtually, with veterans across the globe. We will record their voices for posterity, and share their words with our young participants.
Our Participants
To find veterans, we are connecting with individuals and families, veterans associations, charitable bodies and community groups. We know that this group is advanced in age, and this brings challenges. We are ensuring interviews are conducted accessibly, in a way that accommodates veterans' needs in full and with empathy and forethought throughout. If you know any veterans who might wish to contribute, please contact us at veterans [at] ourfinalwitness.com .
To gather questions from students, we are connecting with schools, tutoring agencies, clubs, societies and through word-of-mouth. We are accepting questions in any format, including video or audio recordings as well as text-based. Please send these to questions [at] ourfinalwitness.com .
Our Timeline
We are beginning interviews in Spring 2025. We are conducting these on a rolling basis, as well as continuing our outreach programme to connect with veterans and children both in the UK and globally.
We will be publishing updates on our blog regularly, and aim to keep our community informed via a monthly newsletter and posts across social media.
Once we have collected a sizable number of interviews, we will begin work on our centerpiece project. The format this will finally take will depend on the quantity and format of responses that we gather. But it will be a thoughtful collection of the voices of our participants partaking in conversation with each other.
Outreach to Veterans and Schools
From Winter 2025 Onwards
Interviews
Conducted virtually and in-person throughout 2025
Final Release
In 2026 we will announce the format our final research piece will take.
Get it all on record now.
We want to lead this conversation while we still can.
To do this, we need introductions to veterans who are willing and able to participate.
Please send us an email if you can help connect us, by clicking the link below (or emailing one of the addresses listed above):
Why Do This
A Message from our Founder
I vividly remember being 14 years old when Harry Patch died. Lance Corporal Patch was the last surviving Tommy who fought for Britain during the barbarity of the Great War. With his death, the last voice of the Lost Generation passed out of this world.
This affected me, incrementally but profoundly, over the course of my life since. There was this generation of men who went through something that changed our world indelibly. I lived, ever so briefly, at the same time as the last few of these men. But very few of my generation had the chance to hear their stories, and therefore we could not learn from them directly. My generation is much the poorer for this.
Similarly, both of my grandfathers fought in the Second World War. However, they both passed when I was a young child, before I understood what that meant. I was never able to ask them the questions I wanted to as I grew older and started to learn about their period of history. Their experience is now necessarily distant to me, like the accounts of others contained in historical texts. I am much the poorer for this.
It is now 16 years on from Patch's death, and we must face the sad reality. Very few members of the Greatest Generation remain with us. The very youngest who saw combat are now 97-98, with the majority of veterans now living as Centenarians. Witnesses to events like the Battle of Britain, with the passing of John "Paddy" Hemingway, are slowly leaving this world forever. This is shutting the door to living history.
So I have resolved to act while I still can. I want to connect those aged 8 to 18 now with as many members of the Greatest Generation as I can. This will start with collecting their questions and conducting interviews, and if we can generate enough support and momentum this will hopefully evolve into a broader movement - potentially facilitating some face-to-face meetings, as well as production of a full scale research project involving video footage.
To do this, I need your support. We have no need of money or resources: what we need are introductions to veterans who would be willing and able to participate. If you can help us with this, please email me at ranulph [at] ourfinalwitness.com . Your support will be truly invaluable to this project's success.