David Botti
|
Oct 30, 2008 08:19 AM
The BBC's Timewatch program provides a fascinating history lesson
on the last moments of WWI, where new research has pinpointed who the
last soldiers to die in combat were -- even though the armistice had
already been signed by the higher-ups. The document was signed around
5 a.m. on the morning of November 11, 1918, but didn't go into effect
until 11 a.m.. In fact, the BBC tells us that on the graves of French
soldiers killed after the war's end, earlier dates were inscribed out
of embarrassment for their avoidable deaths. And then there's these
facts about the last day's casualties:
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.
On that last day one American general's
decision to capture a town so that his dirty soldiers could wash up
resulted in around 300 casualties. The last British soldier to die was
40-year-old Private George Edwin Ellison, who survived almost the
entire four years of that bloodiest of wars (almost a million British
soldiers had been killed). Among his experiences, historians note that
Ellison survived the first gas attack and witnessed the first use of
tanks at the front. It is believed he may have even been a veteran of
the earlier Boer War. He was shot almost an hour before the 11:00 a.m.
cease fire took affect.
Fifteen minutes before the cease fire a
French soldier was killed delivering a message that soup would be
served once the armistice began. And then there is the story of the
two remaining soldiers whose lives would end in the war's final moments:
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.
Here's a short video by the BBC taking us through PVT Ellison's war records.
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