One minute before the Armistice, really bookends what an utterly stupid and pointless war that was. He wasn't the only one killed right before 11 am, there were several:
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 now sergeant Ernest Powell, and charged the position with fixed bayonet. 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".[3] When he got too close to the machine guns, he was hit by a short burst of automatic fire, dying instantly.
Subsequent investigations revealed that on the last day of World War I, during the armistice negotiations in the railroad cars encampment at the Compiegne Forest, French commander-in-chief Marshal Foch refused to accede to the German negotiators' request to declare an immediate ceasefire or truce so that there would be no more useless waste of lives among the common soldiers. The failure to declare a truce, even between the signing of the documents for the Armistice and its entry into force "at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month", caused about 11,000 additional men to be wounded or killed – far more than usual, according to the military statistics.[
11k causalities in six hours all because Foch wouldn't agree to a cease fire.
zerbey on November 11st, 2024 at 14:18 UTC »
One minute before the Armistice, really bookends what an utterly stupid and pointless war that was. He wasn't the only one killed right before 11 am, there were several:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_of_11_November_1918#Last_casualties
hole2score on November 11st, 2024 at 14:22 UTC »
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 now sergeant Ernest Powell, and charged the position with fixed bayonet. 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".[3] When he got too close to the machine guns, he was hit by a short burst of automatic fire, dying instantly.
DiBer777 on November 11st, 2024 at 14:44 UTC »
Subsequent investigations revealed that on the last day of World War I, during the armistice negotiations in the railroad cars encampment at the Compiegne Forest, French commander-in-chief Marshal Foch refused to accede to the German negotiators' request to declare an immediate ceasefire or truce so that there would be no more useless waste of lives among the common soldiers. The failure to declare a truce, even between the signing of the documents for the Armistice and its entry into force "at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month", caused about 11,000 additional men to be wounded or killed – far more than usual, according to the military statistics.[
11k causalities in six hours all because Foch wouldn't agree to a cease fire.