Henry Gunther

Henry Nicholas Gunther
Photo of Gunther which appears on his grave.
Born	(1895-06-06)June 6, 1895 Baltimore, United States
Died	November 11, 1918(1918-11-11) (aged 23) Chaumont-devant-Damvillers, Meuse, France
Buried at	Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery, Baltimore
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	U.S. Army
Years of service	1917–1918
Rank	Sergeant (up to July 1918 or later) Demoted to private Posthumously restored to Sergeant
Unit	313th Infantry Regiment, 79th Division
Battles/wars	World War I Battle of Saint-Mihiel
Awards	Distinguished Service Cross

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

Henry Gunther was born into a German-American family in east Baltimore, Maryland, on June 6, 1895. His parents, George Gunther and Lina Roth, were both children of German immigrants. 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. Henry Gunther worked as a bookkeeper and clerk at the National Bank of Baltimore. He had joined the Roman Catholic service order for laymen, the Knights of Columbus in 1915.

Being of recent German-American heritage, Gunther did not automatically enlist in the armed forces as many others did soon after the War was declared in April 1917. In September 1917, he was drafted and quickly assigned to the 313th 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 back down to a private.

Gunther's unit, Company 'A', arrived at the Western Front on September 12, 1918. Like all Allied units on the front of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, it was still embroiled in fighting on the morning of November 11. The Armistice with Germany was signed by 5:00 a.m., local time, but it would only come into force at 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 with his bayonet. The German soldiers, already aware of the Armistice that would take effect in one minute, tried to wave Gunther off. He kept going and fired "a shot or two". When he got too close to the machine guns, he was shot in a short burst of automatic fire and killed instantly. The writer James M. Cain, then a reporter for the local daily newspaper, The Sun, interviewed Gunther's comrades afterward and wrote that "Gunther 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."