Vigils to mark First World War centenary

British Private John Parr set off on his reconnaissance bike on the lookout for German troops amid the rolling farmland and woods south of Brussels in August 1914.

It was the last anyone saw of ‘Ole Man’ Parr, the ironic nickname he won due to his tender age of 17. He became known as the first Commonwealth soldier to die on the Western Front of World War I, likely killed by German gunfire.

Another British private, George Ellison, was already moving to face the Germans in southern Belgium for the first battle of the two empires. He went on to survive the horrific slaughter of the Somme and Passchendaele and came back to the Belgian pastures, where he was shot and killed on November 11, 1918 — the last day of the war.