The graves of the first and last British soldiers to die in the first world war face each other in a Belgian cemetery

The full four years of the first world war separate the deaths of 16-year-old John Parr from Finchley, north London, and 40-year-old George Edwin Ellison, a son of Leeds.

Between the firing of the bullet that killed Parr and the ringing out of the shot that struck Ellison down, about 750,000 British soldiers were killed. In a remarkable coincidence, just a few yards of lawn stand between the two men’s graves today.

The bodies of these men, the first and last British soldiers to die in the 1914-18 conflict, face each other in the cemetery of St Symphorien, a plot covered by pine trees, Japanese maples and red roses, on the outskirts of the Belgian city of Mons.

Parr, killed by rifle fire on 21 August as he scouted ahead on his bicycle in the first tentative British advance on the city, was buried by the Germans here on ground donated by a Belgian landowner after it was decided by Kaiser Wilhelm’s government in 1917 to honour all those, on both sides, who had died in the area.

The remains of Ellison, who was killed 90 minutes before the armistice in a last pointless advance when it was clear to all that they were on the cusp of peace, were brought here from a field grave by the British in the 1920s. There was no knowledge at the time of the significance of the plot opposite.

The circularity and symbolism of the two men’s deaths by German guns near the same fields in south-west Belgium will not be lost as the world marks the centenary of Armistice Day.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The first world war cemetery in Mons, Belgium. Photograph: Daniel Boffey/The Guardian

On Wednesday, a plaque is be unveiled at Leeds City station to commemorate Ellison, and hundreds of mocked-up newspapers telling his story will be distributed.

On Friday Theresa May will lay a wreath with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the memorial to the Somme, one of the conflict’s bloodiest battlefields, and on which Ellison served.

Next Saturday, one officer and seven from the other ranks in Ellison’s cavalry regiment, the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, will stand by his white Portland headstone, along with 50 members of the Royal Lancers regimental association.

Ellison’s regiment will also attend a commemorative ceremony in Mons on Sunday 11 November at 11am, and will take part in a parade of liberation along with Canadian and Belgian regiments, as Westminster Abbey hosts the British prime minister and representatives of the royal family. Macron has invited 80 heads of state and government representatives to a Paris peace forum, in what is likely to be the last great remembrance in Europe of the war that was supposed to end all wars.

The full explanation of Ellison’s death is likely to remain a mystery, as his service record did not survive the war. But before next week’s commemorations, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has attempted to piece together fresh details to be reported for the first time.

Born near Leeds in 1876, Ellison worked as a barman in a pub in Hartlepool until he decided to join the army in 1902.

In 1912, aged 34, he married 22 year-old Hannah Maria Burgan, a railwayman’s daughter. They had a son, James Cornelius Ellison, in 1913, but just a year later, in the summer of 1914, Ellison had been one of the 120,000 strong British expeditionary force – a “contemptible little army”, according to the kaiser – that was shipped to France.

He arrived on 17 August and was called into action seven days later, going on to endure the horrors of trench and chemical warfare.

In June 1917, his older brother, Frederick Thomas Ellison, a skipper on a fishing vessel before the war who had been called up on the outbreak of hostilities into the Royal Naval Reserve, disappeared on HMT Towhee, a trawler converted into a minesweeper, when it sank in the Channel. Frederick was 40 years old, and left behind a wife, Maud, and two sons.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A poppy installation called Never Again at Königsplatz in Munich, southern Germany. Photograph: Matthias Balk/AFP/Getty Images

Wounded at least once, George Ellison, however, survived to take part in the advance to the Belgian border, and was one of the few original professional soldiers sent out in 1914 to be alive at 5am when the armistice was actually signed.

“But at the end of the war, as things opened up, the cavalry became more important and he and his unit were involved in pushing the Germans out of Mons until right to the end,” said Glyn Prysor, chief historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

“We know he was fighting not far from the cemetery actually and it seemed to have been a really dangerous place to be. At that time people were keeping their heads down, they know the armistice is likely to come, but they were keen to keep pushing, keep fighting the Germans back.”

Squadrons of the 5th Lancers were attached to the Canadian Corps to act as scouts for their advance into Belgium. On the morning of 11 November, Ellison was ordered to advance through Mons and over the canal to secure high ground around the village of St Denis. At about 9.30am Ellison was hit by German fire and killed as he was crossing a canal.

The fighting that day continued right up to 11am, with further casualties among the Canadians fighting to the west.

George Lawrence Price, 25, a private in the 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade, was shot through the head at 10.57am. He was the last British Empire soldier to die. He is also buried at the St Symphorien cemetery, 15 metres from Parr and Ellison, and representatives of his regiment will also attend the ceremony next weekend.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Daniel Boffey/The Guardian

The last allied soldier to die was Henry Gunther, an American who charged alone with his bayonet at a German machine-gun post. He was shot dead at 10.59am in Chaumont-devant-Damvillers near Meuse, in Lorraine, despite attempts by the enemy soldiers to fire over his head to warn him off.

There were about 11,000 casualties on 11 November, more than those killed, wounded or missing on D-Day.

Prysor said: “But while Ellison is the last British soldier that we know of to die before the armistice, there are British soldiers who died after the 11th lying next to him in the cemetery. There were more people dying later in November than on the 11th of November itself, either from wounds or Spanish flu.”

Ellison and Parr are just two of the 513 British, German and Commonwealth soldiers, including 105 who remain unidentified, who rest in the in the St Symphorien cemetery, unique in the scale of its commemoration of both the German dead, below their heavy granite headstones, and the Commonwealth fatalities. Others there include that of Lt Maurice Dease, 25, the recipient of the first Victoria Cross in the war, who is buried next to his best friend, a photograph of whom has recently been laid by the grave.

An extract from a letter from a wife, Eva Carr, 32, to her husband, Jack Carr, 34, from Whetstone, north London, who had been enlisted in 1916 and was serving on Armistice Day.

Eva writes:

The Armistice is signed. The absolute Declaration of Peace won’t be withheld much longer. The thought that there is a now a limit to our separation chokes me. It wasn’t in the morning paper. I had just gone to get my money when I heard it. Flags went up directly. The news came thro’ officially while I was in the Post Office. Leslie came to dinner, & afterwards he & I & the children & Mrs Edwards went up to Tally Ho. General excitement. Leslie & I boarded a tram & went down as far as Camden Town. I meant to go right up West but the Tubes were hopelessly crowded & I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get home, so came back on a tram & got home in time for tea. Mrs Edwards had seated our family on the hearthrug in her drawing room with a Tablecloth on their knees & was feeding them bread & honey. She is a brick. There isn’t another so good. Just keep her so she doesn’t have any cause for jealousy & she’s all there. Will it be six months? Perhaps only three. Marjorie is off her head with excitement. She fled home from school absolutely frantic with joy. Of course I bought them flags. Found those little ones in the loft too. Where is that big one? How quiet it is here - I do wonder where you are & whether the news has reached you yet. Later. 10pm Just came in from Edwards’s. I went in to see if he had a paper & as they were in the drawing room with a fire I stayed a bit. Mrs Edwards played & I sang lots of favourite songs, & I feel now as if I were walking on air. It seems too bad that one so fond of singing, passionately fond, should have been given such a poor voice, doesn’t it? Mr Edwards was reading. He doesn’t understand music he says. He remarked that I must have had a good many singing lessons. Funny wasn’t it. Still, I did enjoy myself, I do like to sing.

• This article was corrected on 3 November 2018. There were 11,000 casualties on 11 November 1918, not 11,000 deaths as stated in an earlier version.