Remembrance and the Butcher's Bill
A generation sacrificed to the fallacy that war can end war.
One of the last rounds of the Great War was fired at 10:59 a.m. on November 11, 1918, part of a 5-round burst from a German machine gun. A charging 23-year-old private Henry Gunther, with fixed bayonet, was dead before he hit the ground, nearly six hours after the armistice to end the Great War was signed at 5 in the morning. After four contentious days of negotiations at a railroad siding in Compiègne, France, the beleaguered combatants settled the butcher’s bill with the Germans still pleading for a cease-fire, but the armistice would not take effect until 11:00 a.m.
The guns went silent at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, but only after British, French and American commanders issued orders that the fighting continue until the last minute. Private Gunther never made it, cut down with thousands of others from both sides and surpassing the highest daily average death toll on the Western Front. Historian Adam Hochschild wrote in American Midnight that U.S. Army General John Pershing ordered “there should be absolutely no let-up in carrying out the original plans until 11 o’clock.”
“Since the armies tabulated their casualty statistics by the day and not the hour, we know only the total toll for November 11, 1918: 2,738 men from both sides were killed, and 8,206 left wounded or missing. But it was still dark at 5:00 a.m., so the great majority of these casualties clearly happened after the Armistice had been signed…incurred to gain ground that Allied generals knew the Germans would be vacating within days, or even hours after the cease-fire.”
While the guns were allowed to cool, the last American KIA, Private Henry Gunther from Baltimore, charging bewildered Germans with fixed bayonet, would never know - or more, why - both sides were yelling and waving at him to stop.
Nations mourning their dead collectively called for an end to the butchery of all wars. Armistice Day was officially recognized in 1919 and designated as “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated." My own father, having fought in two wars, had to have wondered why we even bothered: like Private Gunther, never knowing peace and dying way too young.
After signing Veterans Day into law as a national holiday in 1954, President Eisenhower called on all Americans to “solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.” As we know words are cheap, especially when U.S. hegemony is at stake and defense stocks continue to surge.
It was hoped for decades that the First World War would be “the war to end all wars” and a national commemoration of the cease-fire on November 11th would serve as a warning never to repeat the past, but WWII and an increasingly more interventionist U.S. foreign policy complicated that view. Our constant war state, with “peace” and “cease-fire” no longer found in State Department lexicon and rarely in legacy media conversations, makes a Veterans Day national holiday a much easier sell in 2023.
Acclaimed author Kurt Vonnegut survived the misery of World War II as a U.S. infantry soldier in Europe and wrote of the holiday rebranding in Breakfast of Champions:
"Armistice Day has become Veterans Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans Day is not. So, I will throw Veterans Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things. Veterans Day celebrates 'heroes' and encourages going off to kill and be killed in a future war -- or one of our current wars."
As incredulous as it may seem in an era of provocations and tomorrow’s next proxy war for “freedom and democracy,” with nuclear arsenals on hair trigger, reclaiming at least the intent of Armistice Day is humanity’s last best chance to forestall the indisputable, the ultimate war to end all wars.
Armistice Day/Remembrance Day will never die as long as this story is told. Thanks, Gene.