John Parr (British Army soldier)

Private John Parr (1898 – 21 August 1914) was the first British soldier and the first soldier of the Commonwealth killed in World War I.

Early years
Born in 1898 in Church End, 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 world. When Parr joined the Middlesex 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 from Southampton to Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. With the German army marching into Belgium, Parr's unit took up positions near a village called Bettignies, beside the canal running through the town of Mons. On 21 August, Parr and another cyclist were sent to the village of Obourg, 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 the German 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 first battle 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.

Parr is buried in the St Symphorien military cemetery, just southeast of Mons, and his age is given on the gravestone as twenty, the army not knowing his true age of sixteen. Coincidentally, his grave faces that of George Edwin Ellison, the last British soldier killed during the Great War.