- John Parr (British Army soldier)
Private John Parr (1898 in
Finchley -August 21 ,1914 ) was the first Britishsoldier and the first soldier of the Commonwealth killed inWorld War I .Early years
Born in 1898 in
Church End Finchley , Parr lived most of his life at 52 Lodge Lane, North Finchley as the youngest son of Edward and Alice Parr. On leaving school, he took a job as a golf caddy. Then, like many other young men of the time, he was attracted to the army as a potentially better way of life, and one where he would at least get two meals a day and a chance to see the worldReboul, Percy & Heathfield, John. " [http://www.thisishertfordshire.co.uk/nostalgia/nostalgiabarnet/display.var.434870.0.first_casualty_of_the_war.php First casualty of the war] ". URL accessed05 April 2006 ] . When joined up with theMiddlesex Regiment he almost certainly overstated his age in order to meet the minimum age requirement.Military activity
Parr specialised in becoming a reconnaissance cyclist - riding ahead to uncover information, then returning with all possible speed to update the commanding officer. At the start of
World War I in August 1914 Private Parr’s Battalion, the 4th Middlesex, were shipped fromSouthampton toBoulogne ,France . With the German army marching intoBelgium , Parr's unit took up positions near a village calledBettignies , beside the canal running through the town ofMons . OnAugust 21 , Parr and another cyclist were sent to the village ofObourg , just north east of Mons, and slightly over the border in Belgium, with a mission to locate the enemy. It is believed that they encountered a cavalry patrol from theGerman First Army , and that Parr remained to hold off the enemy whilst his companion returned to report. He was killed in the ensuing rifle fire.Fate
Since the British army retreated to a new position around the
Marne after the firstbattle of Mons , Parr’s body was left behind. In the ensuing months, the slow entrenchment of the war meant that news of Parr’s death was not recognised until much later. After a while his mother wrote to the regiment asking about her son, but they were unable to tell her of his condition, and it may have been that they thought that he had been captured. At the time, there were no dog tags to help with the identification of casualties, and at the time the army would have been going through a considerable “learning curve ”.Parr was buried at
St Symphorien Military Cemetery [http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=894896 Commonwealth War Graves Commission] . URL accessed05 April 2006 ] , and his age is given on thegravestone as twenty, the army not knowing his true age of sixteen. St Symphorien is also the burial place of the last British Empire soldier to be killed in the war, CanadianGeorge Lawrence Price .References
Further reading
*Baker, Chris. " [http://www.1914-1918.net/firstsnlasts.htm Firsts and lasts] "
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