The last soldiers to die in World War I
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Private George Ellison, the last British soldier to die
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By John Hayes-Fisher
Producer, Timewatch
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In the closing minutes of World War I, the ceasefire within touching distance, a handful of troops died. As the 90th anniversary of the Armistice approaches, who were these men?
Just after 5 o'clock on the morning of 11 November, 1918, British, French and German officials gathered in a railway carriage to the north of Paris and signed a document which would in effect bring to an end World War I.
Within minutes, news of the Armistice - the cease fire - had been flashed around the world that the war, which was meant to "end all wars", was finally over.
And yet it wasn't, because the cease-fire would not come into effect for a further six hours - at 11am - so troops on the frontline would be sure of getting the news that the fighting had stopped.
That day many hundreds died, and thousands more injured.
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The respected American author Joseph E Persico has calculated a shocking figure that the final day of WWI would produce nearly 11,000 casualties, more than those killed, wounded or missing on D-Day, when Allied forces landed en masse on the shores of occupied France almost 27 years later.
What is worse is that hundreds of these soldiers would lose their lives thrown into action by generals who knew that the Armistice had already been signed.
The recklessness of General Wright, of the 89th American Division, is a case in point.
Seeing his troops were exhausted and dirty, and hearing there were bathing facilities available in the nearby town of Stenay, he decided to take the town so his men could refresh themselves.
"That lunatic decision cost something like 300 casualties, many of them battle deaths, for an inconceivable reason," says Mr Persico.
Final fallen
So who were the last to die?
New research by the BBC's Timewatch tells the story of some of the last to fall in WWI.
The final British soldier to be killed in action was Private George Edwin Ellison. At 9.30am Pte Ellison of the 5th Royal Irish Lancers was scouting on the outskirts of the Belgian town of Mons where German soldiers had been reported in a wood.
Aged 40, Pte Ellison was not the typical conscriptt, says military historian Paul Reed.
"He was a pre-war regular soldier; we can tell this by his number (L /12643) which is consistent with a man who enlisted in the early years of the 20th Century. He may even have been a Boer war veteran, considering his age."
It must have been odd for Pte Ellison to be back in Mons again. This is where his war started four years earlier when he was part of the British Expeditionary Force retreating from Mons in August 1914, just weeks after the outbreak of the war.
"During his four years at the front, George saw every type of warfare," says Mr Reed.
"He went into the first trenches as the war became deadlocked. He fought in the first gas attack, and on the Somme in 1916, watched the first ever tanks go up to the front."
Almost a million British soldiers had been killed in those intervening years, yet almost miraculously Pte Ellison had so far escaped uninjured. In just over an hour the ceasefire would come into force, the war would be over and Pte Ellison, a former coal miner, would return to the terraced street in Leeds to see his wife Hannah and their four-year-old son James.
Remembering the fallen
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And then the shot rang out. George was dead - the last British soldier to be killed in action in WWI.
Although the last British soldier to die, Pte Ellison would not be the last to be killed that morning. As the minutes ticked towards the 11 o'clock ceasefire, more soldiers would fall.
At 10.45 another 40-year-old soldier, Frenchman Augustin Trebuchon, was taking a message to troops by the River Meuse saying that soup would be served at 11.30 after the peace, when he too was killed.
Astonished enemy
Augustin Trebuchon's grave - along with all those French soldiers killed on 11 November 1918 - is marked 10/11/18. It is said that after the war France was so ashamed that men would die on the final day that they had all the graves backdated.
Just minutes before 11am, to the north around Mons, the 25-year-old Canadian Private George Lawrence Price was on the trail of retreating German soldiers.
It was street fighting. Pte Price had just entered a cottage as the Germans left through the back. On emerging into the street he was struck by the bullet which killed him.
But Pte Price's death at 10.58 was not the last. Further south in the Argonne region of France, US soldier Henry Gunther was involved in a final charge against astonished German troops who knew the Armistice was about to occur. What could they do? He too was shot.
The Baltimore Private - ironically of German descent - was dead. It was 10.59 and Henry Gunther is now recognised as the last soldier to be killed in action in WWI.
Ninety years later, George Ellison's granddaughters Catherine and Marie make an emotional first visit to the cemetery where their grandfather lies.
Catherine knows he died just five days short of her own father's (George's only son James) 5th birthday. "It must have been terrible for my grandma" she says.
It's the first time anyone from the family has seen George's grave. As the two sisters lay white lilies beneath their grandfather' s headstone, Marie echoes what many families in Britain today still feel about those who gave their lives in that war.
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