Just after 5 o’clock on the morning of 11 November 1918, British, French, and German officials gathered in a railway carriage in the Compiègne Forest, north of Paris, to sign an agreement that would end hostilities between the Allies and their last remaining opponent, Germany. The Armistice stipulated that fighting would cease on land, at sea, and in the air, effectively bringing World War I to an end.
However, the ceasefire was not set to take effect until six hours later, at 11 a.m., to ensure that word could reach troops on the front lines. Yet in those final hours, thousands of soldiers were killed and many more wounded.
The bloodshed was not caused by miscommunication. News of the armistice flashed across the world within minutes of its signing. Instead, it was the decision of aggressive Allied commanders who ordered their troops to continue fighting until the official hour, even going so far as to retake towns the Germans had already agreed to surrender. This reckless insistence on last-minute offensives cost thousands of avoidable casualties. Among them was 23-year-old Henry Gunther.
Signing of the Armistice of 11 November 1918. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Henry Gunther was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1895, the elder of two sons of George and Lina Gunther, both American-born children of German immigrants. The family lived in the Highlandtown section of East Baltimore, where George Gunther worked as a “can maker.”
When World War I broke out in Europe, many Americans of German descent found their loyalty questioned. In Gunther’s predominantly German-American neighbourhood, expressing opposition to the war was risky. Despite the threat of being branded a traitor, Gunther resisted enlisting — until he was drafted in September 1917. Reluctantly, he left his job as a clerk and bookkeeper at the National Bank of Baltimore, and his betrothed, to report for duty at Camp Meade, where he joined the newly formed 79th Division, 313th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed “Baltimore’s Own.”
To his relief, the Army assigned him to supply duties, a post that suited his skills in organization and accounting. He performed well and was promoted to sergeant.
Gunther’s steady military career came to an abrupt halt after he wrote a candid letter home to a friend, describing the horrors of trench warfare and advising him to avoid frontline service if possible. The letter was intercepted by an Army postal censor and forwarded to Gunther’s commanding officer.
As a result, Gunther was demoted to private, stripped of his supply duties, and reassigned as a frontline rifleman. Soon after, the 313th shipped out for France.
Gunther took his demotion hard. He grew sullen and withdrawn. Perhaps hoping to redeem his reputation and to prove his loyalty at a time when German-Americans were eyed with suspicion he began volunteering for dangerous assignments as a runner. “He was injured by shrapnel in his hand and could have been sent home, but he insisted on staying to help his Army brothers,” recalled his grand-niece, Carol Gunther Aikman. “I think this alone demonstrates his courage, bravery, and dedication to his battalion, as well as his love for his country.”
For two months, Gunther’s regiment endured brutal fighting along the Western Front as part of the Meuse–Argonne offensive — a massive operation involving over a million American and 800,000 French troops. It became one of the deadliest campaigns in U.S. military history, claiming more than 350,000 casualties.
Gunther managed to survive 47 harrowing days of combat, until on the morning of November 11, when the men of Gunther’s regiment found themselves near the village of Ville-devant-Chaumont, north of Verdun, pinned down by a German machine gun.
At 10:44 AM, a runner arrived with news of the Armistice and orders to cease fire in just 16 minutes. According to the men of Company A, Gunther — perhaps still driven by a need to prove his courage and patriotism, even at the eleventh hour — announced that he was going to take out the German machine gun nest. His comrades tried to dissuade him, but Gunther refused to listen. Armed with his Browning automatic rifle, he crawled toward the enemy position.
Gun crew from Regimental Headquarters Company, 23rd Infantry, firing 37mm gun during an advance against German entrenched positions during the Meuse–Argonne offensive. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
When the Germans saw him coming, they waved and shouted in broken English that the war was over and urged him to turn back. But Gunther kept coming. The Germans fired warning shots, but he remained undeterred. After several vain efforts to make him turn back, the Germans turned their machine gun on him, and shots him dead. The time was 10:59 AM.
General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, officially recorded Henry Gunther as the last American soldier killed in World War I. In death, Gunther achieved the recognition he may have sought in life: his rank of sergeant was posthumously restored, and he was awarded a divisional citation for gallantry in action along with the Distinguished Service Cross. Years later, East Baltimore’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1858 was named in his honour.
Gunther’s remains were repatriated from a military cemetery in France in 1923 and reinterred at Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery in Baltimore. In 2008, a memorial was erected near Chaumont-devant-Damvillers in Lorraine, the spot where he fell. Two years later, on the same Armistice Day observance, a memorial plaque was unveiled at his gravesite in Baltimore.
Gravestone of Henry Gunther. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Historian Joseph Persico, who chronicled Henry Gunther’s story, noted that war mongering Allied commanders led an additional 2,738 soldiers to their deaths on the war’s final day and nearly 11,000 casualties were suffered in the last six hours between the signing and enforcement of the Armistice. General Wright, of the 89th American Division, for instance insisted on taking the French town of Stenay because did not want the Germans to occupy the town after the armistice took effect. Wright intended to make use of the town's bathhouses and other public works, given the amount of time his dirty troops had gone so long without baths or showers. Wright’s recklessness cost 365 casualties, including 61 dead.
Many artillery units also continued to fire on German targets to avoid having to haul away their spare ammunition. Battery 4 of the US Navy's long-range 14-inch railway guns reportedly fired its last shot at 10:57:30 a.m. from the Verdun area, timed to land far behind the German front line just before the scheduled Armistice.
The last French soldier killed during World War I was Augustin Trebuchon, who was taking a message to troops by the River Meuse saying that soup would be served at 11.30 after the peace. He was shot at 10:45 a.m. It is said that after the war France was so ashamed that men would die on the final day that many graves were backdated to 10th November.
Another soldier who died at 10:45 a.m that day was Marcel Toussaint Terfve, a Belgian soldier, after he was mowed down by machine gun fire at Kluizen, Belgium.
The last British soldier to die, George Edwin Ellison of the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, was killed that morning at around 9:30 a.m. while scouting on the outskirts of Mons, Belgium.
The last Canadian and Commonwealth soldier to die was Private George Lawrence Price, who was shot and killed by a sniper while part of a force advancing into the Belgian town of Ville-sur-Haine to the north of Mons, just two minutes before the armistice went into effect.
Reference:
# The sad, senseless end of Henry Gunther, The Baltimore Sun
# The Unknown Soldier, Maryland Life
# The last soldiers to die in World War I, BBC
# The Last Official Death of WWI Was a Man Who Sought Redemption, History.com
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