Image of graves of first and last British soldiers to die in ww1. With article story.
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The graves of the first and last British soldiers to die in the first world war face each other in a Belgian cemetery on the outskirts of the Belgian city of Mons. Parr and Ellison were the first and the last Commonwealth soldiers to die in battle during the first world war.
The full four years of the first world war separate the deaths of 16-year-old John Parr from Finchley, north London, and 40-year-old George Edwin Ellison, a son of Leeds.
Between the firing of the bullet that killed Parr and the ringing out of the shot that struck Ellison down, about 750,000 British soldiers were killed. In a remarkable coincidence, just a few yards of lawn stand between the two men’s graves today.
The bodies of these men, the first and last British soldiers to die in the 1914-18 conflict, face each other in the cemetery of St Symphorien, a plot covered by pine trees, Japanese maples and red roses, on the outskirts of the Belgian city of Mons.
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