Thank you, George Harris for this piece written to commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Great War.
One hundred years ago today, November 11, 1918 at 11:00 AM, the guns fell silent all across the shell pocked battlefields and, as Erich Maria Remarque wrote some twenty-eight years later, it was “All Quiet on the Western Front”. The war, then known as The Great War or the War to End All Wars, was one of the deadliest conflicts in human history with the total number of military and civilian casualtiesof about 40 million. France and Great Britain each lost more than one million men simply because men were thrown up against more modern weapons with greater rates of fire power. French and British generals fought the war like they had fought all others, relying on masses of troops to overpower their opponents. But perhaps the saddest death of the war occurred at 10:59 AM, November 11,1918.
Private Henry Nicholas Gunther, 313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Division was killed by a burst of German machine gun fire at 10:59 AM as he charged a roadblock of two machine guns. Private Gunther had been a sergeant but was reduced to private when the postal censors discovered a letter he had written to folks at home complaining about how terrible things were at the front. Everyone knew the war was ending and all were waiting for the eleventh hour to arrive. But for whatever reason Private Gunther’s war was not over. It was thought that this desperate act was a last ditch effort to show that he was indeed brave. The following day, General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, declared that Private Gunther was the last American killed in the Great War. Gunther was posthumously promoted to sergeant and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
Why have I written this? I suppose it is to show the futility of war and the terrible cost it extracts from all of us. Today we find ourselves entangled in the longest war in our history. We are now in the eighteenth year of a war in Afghanistan with no end in sight-no eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Millions of young men and women have served in our Armed Forces over these years and thousands have paid the ultimate price that war can and does demand all too frequently. Still more thousands move among us, many with the scars of battle there to remind us of General Robert E. Lee’s admonition that, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
Today we are remembering the end Of the Great War. One hundred years have passed since all was quiet on the Wester Front. Flags will be lowered, wreaths will be laid, words will be spoken and paper red poppies will be sold by the American Legion to remind us of the poppies growing on the graves of the fallen in Flanders’ field so long ago.
I wonder, will someone write about our war in Afghanistan? Will the sacrifices of all those young men be remembered on a special day? Will an ode to the opium poppies grown in Afghanistan become the memorial symbol for all those who have died in this seemingly endless war? Or will we still be fighting the war?
Music from WWI
Pictures from the WWI Museum in Kansas City
