First And Last Soldiers Of WWI – First And Last – History Documentary

Two young soldiers died in battle at Mons, Belgium in World War I. In most respects, their lives and deaths were representative of the hundreds of thousands who died in the Great War. But in one respect they are unique. Private John Parr, aged 20 from Middlesex in southern England, was the first Allied soldier to die in the Great War and four years later, Private George Price, aged 25 from Nova Scotia, was the last. Privates Parr and Price never met, but the circumstances of their deaths have linked their lives for eternity. First and Last tells their stories and, in so doing, tells the story of the War itself.

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– All wars need a first and a last, someone to mark the beginning and the end. In this small Belgian town, that role will forever belong to privates John Parr and George Price, the British Empire’s first and last soldiers killed in World War I.

The two men never met, they never had the chance to share a pint or a joke, yet they walked the same cobbled roads, saw the same hill and streams, crawled the same muddy ditches, and died in almost exactly the same spot. Their deaths have become dark mysteries for others to unravel.

Michael Moss is a well-respected pathologist living in Nova Scotia. His knowledge has helped solve some of Canada’s biggest investigations. Yet for all of his success, something in Michael’s life is missing. Exterior, Kings County, Nova Scotia, 1913. Day. In the bay, tranquil waters glisten in the morning sunshine.

The leaves of stunted apple trees nod gently in the breeze. A bee buzzes nearby. Dressed in their Sunday best, a family are walking down the lane toward a distant church. George Price, 20 years old and handsome in a rugged way, comes rushing after them hymnbook in hand.

Dr. Moss’ dreams of having a screenplay on the life of George Price turned into a film. When I learned that George Price was the last Allied soldier killed in the 1st World War, and that he came from Nova Scotia, that was an initial hook for me. George Price was an ordinary fellow.

It’s not as though a history book was already written about him. So it was a matter of going to the archives and seeing what information could be gained. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have more information about him.

But on the other hand, I think that because he was an ordinary fellow, he can be used to personify the millions of ordinary men who also gave their lives. In London, England, local historian Percy Reboul is determined not to let the past disappear.

He too has been bitten by the mystery of the first and last. – I’ve always had a passion for history. You see, there’s a journalistic streak in me. I hate mysteries and I want to solve the mystery of John Parr.

Here is a man famous in his way because he was the first British soldier killed in the First World War. But other than that, what made him tick? We know nothing about him. I’m standing outside 52 Lodge Lane, which was the house in which John Parr lived for most of his short life.

He was born on the 19th of July, 1897 in Finchley and he was one of seven children. They would have been a reasonably well-to-do family because his father was manager of a local dairy farm and he had that rare thing in those days, he had a regular income.

One of the curses of Finchley was the lack of employment and so when John Parr left his school at Albert Road, there would be very limited job prospects. We’re on the North Middlesex golf course and it was here that John Parr worked as a caddy before he enlisted in the army.

One of the mysteries is that we still don’t know what John Parr looked like, is the answer is the answer perhaps in this photograph? It shows two caddies about John Parr’s age, one of them. It could be him, but we don’t really know.

One thing is sure, that John Parr wouldn’t have made a lot of money as a caddy. He got paid ninepence, this is in old money, for 18 holes and you might do two or three rounds a day, three rounds if you’re lucky. It was a very small wage.

I think it’s at that point that John would have gone to say, well, I’m thinking about joining the a as a young soldier. It was a great attraction for people of his age because here in the army at least you

Had two square meals a day and there was a chance that you’d go abroad. It could be an exciting life. In August 1912, with the war still two years away, John Parr quits his job as a caddy and voluntarily joins the army. Even though he’s underage, he manages to enlist with the

Middlesex Regiment’s 4th Battalion and begins his basic training at London’s Mill Hill Barracks. Andrew Robert Shaw is not a soldier. He’s never set foot in a war. But as a historical educator, he spent his life studying them. Andrew spends a great deal of his time in military uniforms.

– John Parr would have come here to the depot at Mill Hill to learn how to be a soldier. And that would have been essentially a 12-week course. Start with the basics, just foot drills so he could march.

And then he was learning how to salute because if he meets anybody senior, he’s got to do that. This is the sort of weapon that John Parr would have been training on. It’s a short magazine Lee-Enfield.

He would know how to use it to start with just dry firing it so he was used to it and then eventually using ammunition. And the ammunition comes in charges like this. Then the bolt goes forward, safety catch is on.

When he’s told to fire, he will bring it up to his shoulder and begin firing. And unless he could achieve 15 aimed shots a minute, he’s not going to get his full pay. John Parr probably ended up being a cycle scout because he was quick, nimble.

Frankly, if he’d been working as a caddy, he would have been good at judging distances & numbers. I suspect he had an interview and someone said, well, I play golf, you must be able to do X and Y. He said, yeah, I can do that, sir.

And that was why he got the job. The bicycle, by the time of the Great War, was becoming more popular. But in late Victorian times, it had been very much a sort of middle class item because it was so expensive.

So you’d have squads of men being drilled in how to ride their bikes and not fall off. The most important thing about the scout was he was a very good shot. He was very observant and he was able to judge numbers and distances. Because if you’re going to give intelligence to the enemy,

You’ve got to know how many there are of them, how far they are away. He’s working with other people because, of course, the fact is that without those extra sets of eyes, soft and vulnerable on his own, he’ll be easy prey. In early summer 1914, while John Parr continues his military training,

Canada is knee deep in the worst depression in two decades. In the cities, there are simply no jobs. In desperation, 22-year-old George Price heads west in the hope of snagging backbreaking work on the fields or on the rails. Exterior, train station, Nova Scotia, summer 1914.

On the platform, by an open carriage door, George bids his family goodbye. His mother, barely holding back her tears, dabs at his clothing, smoothing away imagined imperfections. George kisses her on the cheek and stoops to hug his little sister Florence. Nothing needs to be said.

A whistle blows and the train starts to move. George climbs aboard. Half a world away on the streets of Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand is shot down and killed by a Serbian terrorist. The assassination sets off the dominoes of war. Vienna declares war on the Serbs.

Russia, bound by treaty to Serbia, declares war on Vienna. Germany, bound by treaty to Vienna, declares war on Russia. France, bound by treaty to Russia, declares war on Germany. All hell is about to break loose. Exterior, train station, Moose Jaw, summer 1914. The train pulls away, leaving George on the platform.

He picks up his bag and heads into town. A stack of newspapers lies on a bench outside the stationmaster’s office. The headline reads, War clouds gather over Europe. Celine Garbet works as a military tour guide in Europe. Seven years ago, while serving in a military unit in Saskatchewan

That evolved from the one George Price served in, Celine developed a serious crush on the long-slain soldier. Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan is Celine’s Graceland. – You live here? Do you know of any World War I soldiers who used to live in this area? Well, this is George, George Price.

This is a picture that would have been taken sometime before the war. He looks pretty young here. Well, I had first heard about George when I was in the reserves. And I was in a unit called the Royal Regina Rifles, which during the First World War was actually the 28th Battalion,

And that’s George’s unit. And my first remembrance day with my reserve unit, I heard the story of George being the last guy killed before the armistice came into effect, and that he’d been killed two minutes before the end of the war, the official end of the war, by a sniper.

And it’s a bad luck story that everyone can kind of relate to, and he sort of stuck in my mind after that. I became obsessed in a way, and that’s kind of strange for someone my age to become so interested in something like that.

And the fact that he was dead, I guess, was a little bit morbid. I became really intent on finding out more about him and finding out more about what he might have gone through. While George Price looks for work in Moose Jaw,

Rumblings of war in Europe are too distant to concern the average Canadian. – But on August 4, 1914, all that changes. After Germany invades Belgium to get to France, Britain bound by treaty to Belgium, declares war on Germany Within days, 250,000 men sign up, eager to escape the monotony of everyday life

With a promise of thrills abroad. Everywhere, the streets are choked with crowds. Their cheers are deafening. Victory seems imminent. On their march to the docks of Southampton, John Parr and his battalion are kept in the dark about their impending mission. Once aboard the SS Mombasa,

The men are packed so tightly they can barely move. Only after they are well on their way across the English Channel is their destination finally revealed. Boulogne, France. As John Parr waited aboard the troop ship on the 13th of August, I wonder what went through his mind.

He would never have been abroad before. He probably had never moved very far beyond the boundaries of Finchley itself. And this must have been a big adventure. And he would have been buoyed up, I suppose, by believing what everyone else believed then, that it would all be over by Christmas.

Britain’s entry into World War I not only mobilizes a quarter million British troops, it also automatically pulls Canada into the war. By the end of August, more than 30,000 Canadian volunteers begin military training. Instead of signing up for duty, George Price takes a job as a switcher with the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

Those who were loyal to the British flag were joining up in droves. So if you didn’t join up, were you not loyal? Are you not, you don’t want to serve your country and serve the mother country, England? In the newspaper around that time,

You were hearing reports of boys from home who had been injured or killed. There was definitely pressure to join. They really needed people out there. They were losing them at such a high rate. These were the days when the boys who didn’t go, they were accused of being chicken,

And sometimes people would wave white feathers at them. You know, if they didn’t call a chicken to their face, they had the white feather as a symbol. Get out there and do your bit. But for George Price and Moose Jaw Saskatchewan,

The war might as well be taking place on the other side of the moon. So it’s 1917 and he gets in trouble and ends up spending a month of hard labor at the Regina Jail. He was living in Moose Jaw at a boarding house and his landlady got sick one day and left

The house. And when she came back, she accused George of having stolen some goods from the house. The judge found him guilty and sentenced him to one month of hard labor here at the Regina jail. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, oh, he’s such a nice boy. He’s so sweet.

And then I think, yeah, but he spent time in jail, so maybe he was a bit of a badass. But still, he was a soldier. I’m really not sure. I really don’t have a clear conclusion of who George was or what he was like.

But I really like to think that he was just a nice boy who got into some trouble at some point, like most boys do. We’ll go down a hill over a small stream through a wood. We’ve gone too far now. We’ve got to find something.

The idea of this tour today is to follow through the journey of one man. That man is Private John Parr. What we’re going to do is follow through his final few days. So if you can imagine a group of men, about 1,000 of them altogether, who are now for

The first time setting foot on French soil. They’re the first British soldiers to do so for 99 years. This is the route that Parr and the battalion would have taken. When they arrived in Boulogne, wherever they went, what a fantastic reception they got.

But the men themselves find themselves in a situation where everything is alien. They don’t understand the language. They certainly don’t understand the culture. Tremendous expectation. What they’re facing is an incredibly large opponent. For men like Parr, the idea of going into action doesn’t hold any terror.

If anything, they’re frightened not of dying, they’re frightened of failing. They are very well trained. They are prepared for war and they now want to get on with it. Well, George’s paper trail is pretty thin, so it’s difficult to say exactly when anything happened.

But shortly after getting out of jail, he ends up working on the poiser farm just outside of MooseJaw. This is the poiser farm. It’s the same house. You can tell. The windows have been changed a little bit and they’ve added on a bit. But it’s definitely the same house.

The poisers were one of the first families that settled this part of Saskatchewan. They had one daughter named Carrie. And I mention that because she was friends with Hazel. Hazel MacDonald was a girl who lived just down the road from here.

And Hazel and Carrie used to go to dances together and George used to come with them. The closest anyone has come to putting a name to any possible girlfriend was Hazel, this girl that George used to go to dances with.

George gave Hazel a couple of pictures of him before he went to war. So whether or not Hazel was a girlfriend or a fiancé, he cared enough about her in some way to give her those pictures. her in some way to give her those pictures, and I think that means something.

In 1917, while George Price spends Saturday nights dancing with Hazel, raw Canadian volunteers have been transformed into one of the most efficient and feared fighting machines on the Western Front. But their success comes at a great price. One third of the Canadian Corps that year is either killed or wounded in action.

We’re now in the village where John Parr and the battalion spent three days. Three years earlier, no Canadian or British blood has yet been shed. Parr and the rest of the 4th Middlesex leave the French hills of Boulogne and make their way through the quiet village of Tasnir.

Here they wait impatiently for their marching orders. What we’re trying to do is to work out where the Germans are. We know they’re on the move. The question is, where the hell are they, and what do we do next? And for the men here, it must have been really irritating.

People like John Parr were going to find themselves thinking, hang on, what the hell are we doing here? They’re ready to go into war, and someone’s now saying, hang on, just nothing’s going to happen today. So what the officers had to do was keep them entertained, so they just bought them beer,

And I suspect they’d get them fairly drunk. And of course, what they’re saying is, I’m sure there’ll be casualties, but it won’t be me. It’ll be somebody else. While John Parr and his restless battalion while away the hours in Tasnir, the bridges of the Rhine,

Grown under the weight of a million and a half German soldiers, flooding to the Western Front, and the beginning of the war to end all wars. In August 1917, after 3 years of bloody and intense fighting, and in response to high casualties and a steady decline in recruitment,

Canadian Prime Minister Borden imposes conscription. Soon after, George Price is conscripted in Moose Jaw. After 3 weeks of training, he is sent to Halifax, where he boards the SS Scotian. On the creaking ship, soldiers refrain from playing cards. They stare blankly ahead, barely talking.

Unlike those that sailed on the SS Mombasa some 4 years earlier, George Price and the rest carry no illusions about what they are about to face. As the ship sails urgently towards a training camp in Bramshot, England, most aboard understand they will not be coming back. Exterior, Bramshot, day, winter 1918.

Splashing through a torrent of muddy water running down the lane, the troops enter a large hutted training camp. They pass by a series of wooden buildings. Some of these have storefront windows with signs advertising laundry and military stores. Major Shane Schreiber is a Canadian soldier. He is also a military historian.

Shane has served overseas both in Bosnia and in Afghanistan. He understands what it means for a soldier to fight far away from home. Because he’s lost men under his command, he also knows what it means not to come home at all. – These are the remains of Camp Ontario,

Which was the Canadian Corps Reinforcement Camp from 1916 to 1918. And it’s here that Price would have been trained in the arts of war and the tactics that he would have used on the Western Front. Training has changed dramatically since Parr received his in 1914. In the short span of 4 years,

The use of horses and cavalry in warfare has been greatly reduced. On his arrival at Camp Ontario, George Price is instructed on how to use hand grenades, how to throw bombs, how to use machine guns, and how to use a box respirator.

Whereas John Parr had trained for 2 years to become a soldier, Private Price is expected to make that transition in less than 4 months. You’ve got to take that big chunk of manpower that conscription has given you, and you’ve got to train them for the Western Front.

The instructors in Camp Ontario are going to feel the pressure because they know that the guy’s going to face combat in conditions that are far more difficult than they may have even ever imagined. All that is left is a few outlines of a few of the buildings and a weed-choked field.

Much like our memory of the Great War, not much is left of it except a few soon-to-be-covered scars. By the summer of 1918, a string of German offensives has badly overextended the German army. The Allied forces have regained numerical advantage. Now equipped with superior artillery, tanks, communications, and leadership,

The Allied forces organize the Battle of Amiens. It is the beginning of the last hundred days of the war, and for the Germans, it is the beginning of the end. Well, where we are now is in Boves Woods. This would have been the woods that the Canadian Corps

Would have occupied just prior to jumping off for the Battle of Amiens. They would have brought the men and the horses into these woods by day to hide them from the Germans. And then at night, these woods would transform themselves into busy places. There’d be thousands of men packed in these woods,

Cheek by jowl. They couldn’t give away their presence because if they did, the Germans would shell the woods. And that was key to achieving the tactical surprise on August the 8th. Exterior, near Amiens, 420 AM, August 8th, 1918. Allied guns open up an intense barrage along a 20-mile front.

Express chains of shell fire hurtle overhead and crash in the enemy sector on the opposite side of the valley. Barely audible through the din, squeaking heralds the approach of Allied tanks coming down the slope like large gray beetles. Private George Price checks his gear as he leaves the trench. [♪dramatic music playing.]

I don’t think Private Price would have known right away what a momentous event he was part of. I think by later on in the day, certainly he would have gotten a sense that they had come an awful long way and that they had beaten an awful lot of Germans.

Germans were collapsing, and I think they would have really began to believe that it just might be possible that the war could be over by Christmas for the first time in four years. [♪dramatic music playing.] Four years earlier, John Parr and the 4th Middlesex

Are also under the impression that the war will be over by Christmas. After three long days of waiting in Tazniere, the men receive their marching orders and head towards Belgium and the hillside town of Mons. It was very misty early in the morning, and there was low cloud.

That really meant that the job of the scout was going to be more important than ever. They needed to know where the enemy were, and there had to be a job that was done by people who were either going to be on horseback or, in the case of Parr, on a bicycle.

And the way it worked was you went with a pair. One person cycles, the other person observes. Then the other person cycles, then the other person observes, which means if you get hit by the enemy, if they bounce you, all being well,

One of you is in a position where he can hide himself and can help the other one get away. On the morning of August 21, after a full day of marching, the 4th Middlesex reaches Mons. They are asked to defend O’Bourg Station and two strategic bridges running over the main canal.

Parr and his battalion position themselves outside of town. Nobody knows how many Germans lie ahead. John Parr is sent out to scout for enemy positions. At this early point in the war, Parr is the most advanced British soldier on the Western Front. Four years later, in August of 1918,

Locating German soldiers is no longer an issue. Allied forces know pretty well where they are, in front of them and in full retreat. Following the success of the Battle of Amiens, the Canadian Corps is once again asked to spearhead an Allied offensive, this time 2 km outside the French town of Arras.

Interior, the Arras Caves, August 28, 1918. Private George Price and his mates descend a long series of steps. Lights ficker in the distance at the end of the passageway. Suddenly, the men find themselves in a large chamber, the chalk-white walls rising to the ceiling like a cathedral. Oh, look at this.

Obviously somebody with time on their hands has drawn a picture, a picture of their sweetheart, and has left his mark behind. We are 20 metres underneath the city of Arras in medieval catacombs that the New Zealanders who were posted here in 1915 discovered

While they were trying to dig tunnels towards the German lines. Holy… Oh, my goodness. Oh, look at this. And it was in these precise caves that the Canadian Corps stayed before they jumped off before the Battle of Arras. And it is so symbolic of the change in warfare

That had come about during the Great War, from open green fields to living down here like cavemen. Oh, look at this. Oh, my God. It looks like it says, RHC, Royal Highlanders of Canada, and they’ve got their markings here, the single maple leaf. Carved in the walls of a cave in France

Long before it became our national symbol, you know, long before the Canadian flag changes to the single maple leaf. You just imagine the guys down here kind of working diligently by candlelight with this bayonet or whatever he would have used to carve this stuff, trying to waste, you know, another couple hours

Until they had to go back above ground. Exterior, Bouissy, September 7th, 1918. George and his mates settle in for the night. George sniffs the air, then stifles a cough. One of the things that had become a regularity on the battlefields of 1918 was the new and terrible weapon of gas warfare, chemical warfare,

And it really was a double-edged sword because if the wind changed direction or if the gas hasn’t dissipated before you attacked, you could actually end up gassing your own troops. And that’s precisely what happened to Price here in September of 1918. The men instinctively duck down, pressing their faces into the soil.

For a second, each man holds his breath. Then they start spluttering and coughing as each frantically reaches for his gas mask. George is wheezing and in great difficulty. Suddenly, his lungs would have constricted. They would have felt like they were burning or been on fire. He would have felt like a drowning man.

He would have been panicked, unable to get breath. His eyes would burn, and really, he would shut down except for that horrible gasping, suffocating, choking feeling of trying to get air into your lungs and nothing coming. Private Price would not be the same man after having suffered from a gas attack like that.

After 39 days in a field hospital, Private George Price rejoins his battalion. The Allied forces continue their relentless advance on the Germans. This advance leads George Price into Mons, on the very spot where four years earlier, John Parr fell. Parr and his colleague have cycled up and they’ve been able to cross over,

So they’ve probably not gone more than about 4 kilometers or so, and all they’re doing is trying to get some idea of where the enemy are. So they’re coming up along slow, and they’re just trying to see how close they can get. And if we stop here, it’s about right.

The story goes, our man Parr and a man called Private Beard, the two of them came up here. Parr is the one that realizes the problem. German troops up there, probably light infantry, Jägers, open fire with their rifles. Parr throws his bike down,

And then what he does is he puts himself in here to get some cover, throwing himself down as far as he can so he’s actually in position so he can then engage them. So whether he then waves them back and said to Beard, go back, go back, tell them we found them,

In the hope that he could get back to his bike and then get away, I don’t know. But whatever happens in the exchange of fire, he’s hit, he’s dead. Along a ditch not unlike a thousand others, John Parr, an ex-caddy from Finchley, the son of a milkman, becomes the first British Empire soldier

To die in the Great War. Four years later, near that very same ditch, George Price becomes the last. Exterior, Framerie, day, November 10th, 1918. Under cover of heavy fog, Private George Price’s unit advances rapidly towards Mons. As they moved into the border regions of France, what they found were an overjoyed populace

That had been roughly treated by the German occupiers. And so as the Canadian Corps went through the villages, it was warmly, warmly greeted, greeted like heroes essentially, and fedded by the people. But they also noticed the impoverishment of the people and so the troops voluntarily went on half rations

So they could give the other half of rations to the people. For the Canadian Corps, it would have been a time of long marches during the day to try and catch up with the Germans who would retreat as far as possible at night. The Canadians were meeting very little opposition,

So I think Private Price would have had a real sense that the war was going to come to an end very, very soon. I think they really would have been looking forward to the end of the war, so there’d been a real heightened sense of anticipation,

But there would have also been a sense of impending loss in that the life they had known, which was so different from any other reality they had known before, the life they had known was about to come to an end. This great adventure, this horrible tragedy,

This crazy thing that they had been part of, this great thing that they had been part of, was suddenly going to end. And for a lot of them that had spent two or three years on the Western Front, I think they would now, their thoughts would be turning to not just to home

And resuming their civilian lives, but also to lost friends and all the guys that weren’t with them anymore. And I think they would begin to experience the tinge of sadness, the bittersweet moment that victory was going to bring. Exterior, day, November 11th, 1918. The enemy is in full retreat,

Setting up machine guns to delay their pursuers. Private George Price and his friend, Art Goodmurphy, run across a drawbridge over the canal. Apparently they thought they saw a German machine gun post set up in the buildings just over here. And so they made a decision that they should cross the river

And go over and investigate. They went across the bridge when suddenly a shot rang out and apparently Price had been hit through the back, mortally wounded. He fell to the ground. Goodmurphy immediately tried to drag him into cover and apparently was assisted by a young Belgian girl.

He took off a crocheted flower that he had kept as a souvenir and gave it to the young Belgian girl that was standing over him. Price died very shortly thereafter. At about 10.58 in the morning, as Goodmurphy stood over the body of his fallen friend, he could hear the bells ringing in Mons.

The Great War had ended. One of the things I find sad about history is that we know so much about the captains and kings and we know so very little about ordinary people. John Parr is one of those people. I know very little about him, but his awful fate, really,

I mean, lasting precisely one minute in a war which went on for five years, must arouse our sympathy and our attention. I said once to my friend that I would love to live in Moose Jaw because that’s where George was from, and she said she thought that was kind of weird

Because she thought there’s nothing there that would ever remind you of him, but that’s not true, actually. There’s a lot in Moose Jaw that reminds me of George. The lot where he used to live, the rooming house isn’t there, but there used to be something there. I know what it was.

The Stony Beach, the Poyser Farm, all of that stuff are souvenirs of his past. It’s proof for me that he did walk the face of the earth. At some point he was alive and people cared about him and he had a family and sisters and a mum

And people who never got to see his grave. Exterior, the village square in Mons, day. At the base of an old church, a group of strangers drawn together by the death of two men they have never met gather for a quick photograph. I wonder if I could ask… Thank you. Just…that’s it.

Can we have the ladies, the smaller people, just in front of the steps, please? From above, the peal of bells begins to fill the square as if to inaugurate the moment. In all likelihood, they will never see each other again. Here’s the big moment. How about that?