UK & World News
World War One: A Cemetery's Poignant Story
The small Belgian cemetery of St Symphorien, nears Mons, has a poignant story which makes it an appropriate venue to commemorate the outbreak of World War One.
The first shots on the Western Front were fired at dawn on August 23, 1914.
The morning was misty and damp and the British Expeditionary Force, newly arrived in Belgium, was camped in defensive positions on the bank of the Mons-Conde Canal. Facing them was the German invasion force they had come to repel.
By 10am the summer sun had risen and burnt through the fog. For the first time the enemy was revealed to the British soldiers, larger and better armed than anything they had expected.
Despite fighting valiantly through the day, the men of the BEF II Corps were overrun. By nightfall it was all over. The Germans had won the Battle of Mons, the first victory on the Western Front was theirs.
The British began the long, hard retreat towards Paris.
The following year, 1915, after much heavy fighting, German soldiers dug up the dead around Mons. A local landowner gave them a patch of land on the edge of the small suburb of St Symphorien.
But it came with one condition attached: he insisted the German troops bury the Commonwealth dead with the same dignity and respect they do their own comrades. The Germans agreed.
Today, the cemetery is cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. There are roughly an equal division of graves: 229 Commonwealth, 284 German.
Two stand out: That of Private John Parr of the Middlesex Regiment. He was shot and killed by a German sniper on August 21, 1914, and became the first soldier to die on the Western Front.
His grave, by sheer coincidence, faces that of Private George Ellison of the Royal Irish Lancers. He was killed on November 11, 1918, hours before the Armistice Declaration was signed - the last British soldier to be killed on the Western Front.
On Monday, relatives, members of European Royal families and senior politicians will gather at this small cemetery to remember the outbreak of the war 100 years ago.