Two soldiers linked in death by a bizarre coincidence
They are two of the countless graves dug for the victims of the Great War. But, in a bizarre quirk of fate, they contain the bodies of the first and last British soldiers to perish in that bloody conflict.
By John Lichfield in Mons, Belgium
Saturday, 8 November 2008
In a beautiful, wooded cemetery at the end of a suburban lane in Belgium, the body of John Parr, from Finchley, North London, rests a few paces from the body of George Edwin Ellison from Leeds.
Between their graves there lies seven yards of lawn and, chronologically and metaphorically, the bodies of all the other British soldiers – approximately 800,000 men – who died in the Great War.
Private Parr, 16, a bicycle scout, and Pte George Ellison, 40, of the Royal Irish Lancers, were, respectively, the first and the last British soldiers to die in combat in the First World War. Pte Parr was killed on 21 August, 1914, the day before the first rearguard action fought by the British Expeditionary Force near Mons on the Belgian-French border.
Pte Ellison was killed on the morning of 11 November, 1918, 90 minutes before the armistice which brought the industrial-strength slaughter of the first modern war to a close, 90 years ago next Tuesday. Both died within a couple of miles of the spot where they are buried. Their memorial stones face each other across a narrow strip of grass in a cemetery which contains more than 500 British, Irish, Canadian and German graves.
When you visit the Saint Symphorien cemetery, just east of Mons – one of the most beautiful and moving of all the many First World War cemeteries – it seems obvious that the placing of the two graves was deliberate. It is a wry and moving tribute to the fact that, for the British Army, the Great War, "the war to end all wars", began and ended in the same place.
The Independent has established that the placing of the graves was not deliberate. The fact that John Parr and George Ellison lie facing one other, overlooked by pine trees and surrounded by rose bushes and cotoneasters, is a poignant and macabre accident of fate. At our request, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which does such an extraordinary job in maintaining military cemeteries all over the world, checked its records.
"It is a pure coincidence," said Peter Francis, spokesman for the commission. "John Parr's body was placed where it is now by the Germans in 1914. George Ellison's body was brought to the Saint Symphorien cemetery from a temporary burial place after the war. Our records suggest that Pte Ellison was simply buried in the next available space. It was not then realised that he was the last British soldier to die in combat. Nor was the fact that Pte Parr was the first British soldier to die established until later."
The proximity of the two graves – and the life stories of privates Parr and Ellison – encapsulates the history of the First World War. On the eve of the 90th anniversary Remembrance Day, their stories can perhaps stand for those of the 800,000 British soldiers – and six million soldiers on all sides – who died between August 1914 and November 1918.
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