11/11/1918, 10:59 A.M.: Henry Gunther is the Last Soldier Killed in WWI

The BBC's Timewatch program provides a fascinating history lesson on the last moments of WWI, where new research has pinpointed who the last soldiers to die in combat were -- even though the armistice had already been signed by the higher-ups.  The document was signed around 5 a.m. on the morning of November 11, 1918, but didn't go into effect until 11 a.m..  In fact, the BBC tells us that on the graves of French soldiers killed after the war's end, earlier dates were inscribed out of embarrassment for their avoidable deaths.  And then there's these facts about the last day's casualties:

The respected American author Joseph E Persico has calculated a shocking figure that the final day of WWI would produce nearly 11,000 casualties, more than those killed, wounded or missing on D-Day, when Allied forces landed en masse on the shores of occupied France almost 27 years later.

On that last day one American general's decision to capture a town so that his dirty soldiers could wash up resulted in around 300 casualties.  The last British soldier to die was 40-year-old Private George Edwin Ellison, who survived almost the entire four years of that bloodiest of wars (almost a million British soldiers had been killed).  Among his experiences, historians note that Ellison survived the first gas attack and witnessed the first use of tanks at the front.  It is believed he may have even been a veteran of the earlier Boer War.  He was shot almost an hour before the 11:00 a.m. cease fire took affect.

Fifteen minutes before the cease fire a French soldier was killed delivering a message that soup would be served once the armistice began.  And then there is the story of the two remaining soldiers whose lives would end in the war's final moments:

Here's a short video by the BBC taking us through PVT Ellison's war records.