The last Coventry soldier to die on the last day of World War One

[dutchman]

His name was Horace McKnight. He had survived until the very last day of the war. He would not live to see another.

This is the tragic story of a Coventry soldier who died on the very last day of the Great War.

After four long years of conflict, a treaty was signed on November 11, 1918, marking the end of the war.

But it wasn't to be a day of complete joy, with 910 Allied soldiers lost their lives that day - including one from Coventry.

According to the records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), Private Horace McKnight died on Armistice Day.

On this day, the treaty signed in Paris brought an end to fighting on land, sea and air, four years, three months and one week after the conflict began.

Yet - in a brutal demonstration of the sheer scale of the killing during the “Great” War - a total of 910 Allied soldiers perished on November 11 before peace was declared at 11am.

Private McKnight, like many of these, did not die in battle. Many had already been shipped back home, only to succumb to their wounds. Others had fallen to the deadly Spanish Flu that was sweeping the depleted continent.

He was just 20-years-old when he died.

Not much is known about his life. He was born in Day’s Lane in Coventry, where his parents - John and Annie - continued to live.

He had joined the Seaforth Highlanders. His battalion had been taking part on the Final Advance on Picardy and ended the war somewhere near Cambrai.

Private McKnight died there, of wounds. He was buried in France, at the Etaples Military Cemetery.

His brother, Leonard McKnight, had been killed in action two and a half years earlier in Mesopotamia - another victim of the war.

[Melisandre]

Such a shame they all died in vain.