The First and The Last

by Jeremy Poolman

Separated by four years and six feet, John Parr and George Ellison lie now in the same French cemetery, quite by chance within a whisper’s distance of each other. Though they never met, they share an extraordinary story. A bicycle soldier and still a teenager, John Parr thought the war exciting, an adventure that would stand him in good stead for the rest of his life. George Ellison, on the other hand, had known war in South Africa and that, whatever its location, it was nothing but horror and the letting of blood. In his forties at the outbreak of the Great War, he joined up because duty left him no option. He’d a wife and children and work in a mine to return to. But neither he nor John Parr returned. He lost his life in the war’s final moments, while John Parr fell victim on the war’s first day. He was the first to die, and George Ellison the last.

The First and the Last is the extraordinary true story of two Englishmen, men whose deaths and whose wildly different lives lend the conflict a new perspective. Through extensive research their stories reveal both what separated them but also what united them. You will walk where they walked. You will ride John Parr’s bicycle and sit in the northern church where George Ellison sat and prayed before setting off the next day for France. Read their story and The Great War will never be the same again.

300 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2021