Henry Gunther

Henry Nicholas John Gunther (June 6, 1895 – November 11, 1918) was an American soldier and possibly the last soldier of any of the belligerents to be killed during World War I. He was killed at 10:59 a.m., about one minute before the Armistice was to take effect at 11:00 a.m.

Early life Henry Gunther was born into a German-American family in east Baltimore, Maryland, on June 6, 1895. He grew up in Highlandtown, an East Baltimore neighborhood heavily influenced by German immigrants, where his family belonged to Sacred Heart of Jesus Roman Catholic parish.

Military service Being of recent German-American heritage, Gunther did not automatically enlist in the armed forces as many others did soon after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. In September 1917, he was drafted and assigned to the 313th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed "Baltimore's Own"; it was part of the larger 157th Brigade of the 79th Infantry Division.

Promoted as a supply sergeant, he was responsible for clothing in his military unit, and arrived in France in July 1918 as part of the incoming American Expeditionary Forces. A critical letter home, in which he reported on the "miserable conditions" at the front and advised a friend to try anything to avoid being drafted, was intercepted by the Army postal censor. As a result, he was demoted from sergeant to private. The armistice with Germany was signed by 5:00 a.m., local time, but it would not come into force until 11:00 a.m.

Gunther's squad approached a roadblock of two German machine guns in the village of Chaumont-devant-Damvillers near Meuse, in Lorraine. Gunther got up, against the orders of his close friend and sergeant Ernest Powell, and charged the position with a Browning automatic rifle. The German soldiers, already aware of the armistice that would take effect in one minute, tried to wave Gunther away. He kept coming, and fired "a shot or two".

The writer James M. Cain, then a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, interviewed Gunther's comrades afterward. He wrote that Gunther had "brooded a great deal over his recent reduction in rank, and became obsessed with a determination to make good before his officers and fellow soldiers".

Memorials Several years after Gunther's death, a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in east Baltimore, number 1858, was named after him. The post honoring Gunther closed in 2004.

Commemorative plaque at the grave of Henry Gunther in Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery in Baltimore, unveiled on November 11, 2010. On Veterans Day (called Armistice Day in France), November 11, 2008, a memorial was constructed near the place in Chaumont-devant-Damvillers in Lorraine where Gunther died. Two years later on the same remembrance holiday observance, November 11, 2010, a memorial plaque was also unveiled at his grave site in America at 10:59 a.m. by the German Society of Maryland.