Local history

Almost a million British soldiers died between 1914 and 1918. But on November 11th 1918 Private George Ellison had every reason to think he would be one of the lucky ones.

Just after 5 o'clock that morning, British, French and German officials had met in a railway carriage to the north of Paris and signed a document to end the 'Great War'. That cease fire wouldn't come into effect until 11am and in those final hours of war hundreds more men would die, Private George Ellison amongst them.

Born in York in the 1870s, George wasn't a teenage conscript. In 1914 he was a regular soldier serving with the 5th Royal Irish Lancers. He'd survived four years of war but that morning he would die in Belgium just hours before the end of the war.

Michael Palin

in fact Private Ellison was the last British soldier to be killed in action during the Great War. His story, along with those of the other men who fell that day, is told in a new documentary from the BBC.

'The Last Day of World War 1', presented by Michael Palin, was produced by John Hayes-Fisher. He says, "We knew virtually nothing about Private Ellison, so we appealed on BBC Radio York's Jonathan Cowap show about a year ago to try and find out more information!"

Listener and keen family historian, David Poole, contacted the programme which led the team to find Private Ellison's surviving grand-daughters. John Hayes-Fisher explained that that discovery made a real difference to the programme, "We were able to take the grand-daughters over to Mons in Belgium to see their grandfather's grave. It was an incredibly emotional time, not just for them, but for the whole production team. They were the very first people in the family to see the grave."

John Hayes-Fisher admits that many men died on that day, but he is fairly confident that Private George Ellison was the last British soldier to die in action on that final day of the 'war to end all wars.'