YOUR report on the last British soldier to lose his life in the First World War (‘Goodnight Kiss’ for last of the fallen, September 26) mentioned the military cemetery of St Symphorien outside Mons.

I went there some years ago to visit the grave of Lt Maurice Dease, of the Royal Fusiliers, the first VC of that war, killed in action nearby on August 23, 1914.

Dease’s courage had so impressed the Germans that they arranged for him to be buried with full military honours in their own military cemetery.

The first German soldier to win the Iron Cross, Oskar Niemeyer of the 84th (German) Infantry Division, is also buried in the same cemetery.

Seven kilometres away from St Symphorien lies the village of Harveng. Its church graveyard contains a tiny Commonwealth War Graves section for six British soldiers killed on November 10, 1918, on the eve of the armistice.

One of them, Sgt Joseph Garbutt, was a York man who had planned to become a solicitor: he had been articled to HE Harrowell of York.

On the same day that Sgt Garbutt died my own grandfather and his team of Royal Engineers were ordered to undertake what they knew was a suicide mission against a determined German machine gunner defending a nearby canal.

They refused. Everyone knew that an armistice was about to be declared but there were a few officers determined to seize “their” moment of glory. Earlier in the war such a refusal would have resulted in those responsible being court-marshalled and shot. Happily on this occasion wiser counsels prevailed and the incident was ignored - or the file ‘lost’.

Tony Lawton,

Skelton, York