St. Symphorien Military Cemetery was established by the Germans in late August 1914, after the Battle of Mons and the subsequent British retreat from Belgium. It remained in German hands until November 1918 and has the distinction of containing the graves of some of the first and last casualties of the First World War John Parr Birth - 1898 Death - Aug. 21 1914 British soldier, believed to be the first British battle casualty of World War I. Born in the Finchley neighborhood of Barnet, a north London suburb, he enlisted in the 4th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment in 1913. At the beginning of the war he was part of a cycle reconnaissance unit and was on patrol near Oburg, just northeast of the town of Mons, Belgium. It is not certain how Parr became a casualty, but it is believed he and his partner encountered a patrol of the German First army and Parr remained behind to delay them while the other soldier returned to report. Because that area of Belgium was not recovered by the Allies until close to the end of the war (in fact, in one of the great ironies of the war, the last battle casualty of the war, Pvt. George Edwin Ellison, was killed close to the same spot on November 11, 1918), Parr's body was buried in a local cemetery by the Germans and not identified by the British until 1918. In 1914 it was originally hoped that he had been captured, but when no word came back through neutral sources that he was being held, he was listed as missing in action. And as he had lied about his age on his original enlistment application, his grave marker lists his age as 20 when it was actually 16. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9792349 George Lawrence Price Birth - Nov. 15 1892 Death - Nov. 11 1918 World War I Canadian Soldier. He served during World War I as a Private in the 28th Battalion, Canadian Infantry (Saskatchewan Regiment). He was the last Commonwealth battle casualty of the war (and probably of all combatants), being killed at 10:58 a.m. on November 11, 1918, near Ville-sur-Haine, Belgium, two minutes before the Armistice cease-fire was scheduled to take effect. (He was originally buried in Havre Old Communal Cemetery and probably moved to St. Symphorien, possibly for the significance of that cemetery as the final resting place of the first British soldier to die in the war, Pvt. John Parr, as well as that of the first man to be awarded a VC, Lieutenant Maurice James Dease). http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9792310 Maurice James Dease Birth - Sep. 28 1889 Death - Aug. 23 1914 Victoria Cross Recipient, participant in the earliest action to recognized in World War I, and the first man to receive the award posthumously in that war. Born in Gaulstown, Coole, County Westmeath, Ireland, Dease attended Stonyhurst College (a secondary school which numbered seven holders of the VC among its graduates), then the Army College at Wimbledon and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the Royal Fusiliers in 1910 and promoted to full lieutenant in 1912. His battalion was in the first deployment to Europe after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, arriving in Le Havre on the 13th of August, 1914, and finding itself facing the Germans across the Condé Canal at Mons, Belgium, on August 22. Their position, a railroad bridge, was a difficult one as the canal took a curve at the point Dease's company was holding, and they were facing the enemy on three sides. His citation states that "On 23rd August 1914 at Mons, Belgium, Nimy Bridge was being defended by a single company of Royal Fusiliers and a machine gun section with Lieutenant Dease in command. The gunfire was intense, and the casualties were heavy, but the lieutenant went on firing in spite of his wounds, until he was hit for the fifth time and was carried away to a place of safety where he died. A private of the same Battalion [Sydney Frank Godley, who was also awarded the VC], who had been assisting the Lieutenant while he was still able to operate the guns, took over, and alone he used the gun to such a good effect that he covered the retreat of his comrades." Dease is buried in St. Symphorien Cemetery near Mons, where Pvt. John Parr, believed to be the first British battle casualty of the war, and Pvt. George Edwin Ellison and Pvt. George Lawrence Price, the last British and Canadian casualties, respectively, are also buried. Dease's VC medal is on display at the Royal Fusiliers Museum in the Tower of London http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8041624
