Thousands of people lined the streets to pay their respects at the funeral of the last Tommy Harry Patch – as an 18-year-old soldier from the West Midlands killed in Afghanistan was laid to rest.

First World War veteran Mr Patch was being honoured at a service at Wells Cathedral, Somerset.

After the death of Henry Allingham at 113 on July 18, Mr Patch was briefly the oldest man in Europe, at 111 years at the time of his death on July 25.

Mr Patch was the last British Army veteran of the First World War and the last to have served in the trenches, serving as an assistant gunner in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry at the Battle of Passchendaele.

Meanwhile, the funeral was also taking place of rifleman Joseph Murphy of 2nd Battalion The Rifles, from Castle Bromwich, who died on July 10 in an explosion near Sangin in Helmand Province.

After his funeral, the cortege was due to stop at Villa Park so a representative of Aston Villa could lay a wreath on his coffin.