The Henry Steinway Story

And we return to our American stories. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in nineteen eighteen, fighting officially concluded in what was to that point the deadliest man-made disaster in human history. We’re talking about World War One. France lay in ruins, millions of wives had become widows, and nearly one percent of the world’s population lay dead. But who was the last one to fall? Here’s Craig Dumay of the Grateful Nation Project with the story of Henry Gunther. Take it away, Craig.

Henry Gunther’s grandparents emigrated from Germany in the mid-eighteen hundreds, starting new lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Henry was born on June six, eighteen ninety five. As World War One raged in Europe from nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen, many Americans of German heritage came under suspicion about their loyalty to the United States. In Gunther’s largely German-American East Baltimore neighborhood, it would be dangerous to voice opposition to the war in Europe. In May of nineteen seventeen, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, authorizing the federal government to temporarily expand the military through conscription. We now call it the draft. The law stated that all male citizens or male persons, not alien enemies, who have declared their intention to become citizens between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, are required to register for military service. Twenty-four million men registered for the draft. Of the total number of U.S. troops sent to Europe in World War One, two point eight million had been drafted, compared to two million who volunteered. When Henry Gunther was drafted into service in September nineteen seventeen, he was working as a clerk and a bookkeeper and was engaged to be married. While he was less than eager to leave for the battle trenches of Europe, Henry shipped out with the Three Hundred and Thirteenth Infantry Regiment in July of nineteen eighteen. By that time, the war was clearly entering its final act. Most knew that America’s participation would bring a decisive end to the conflict. Much to his relief, the Army put Private Gunther’s organizational and accounting skills to use with an assignment as the supply sergeant for Company A of the Three Hundred and Thirteenth Infantry Regiment. He performed his duties well and was promoted to the rank of sergeant. Everything changed for Sergeant Gunther when he wrote a letter home to a friend describing the horrors of the trenches and advising him to avoid front lines as if possible. The letter was intercepted by an Army postal censor and forwarded to Gunther’s commanding officer. The government was on high alert for any signs of disloyalty from its large population of German-American citizens, making it a crime for any citizen to pass information that would hinder U.S. Armed Forces’ prosecution of the war, or for any person to promote the success of America’s enemies. In a message to Congress, President Woodrow Wilson warned that the war would require a redefinition of national loyalty because of, quote, “millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us.” He openly stated, quote, “If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with a firm hand of repression.” Sergeant Henry Gunther was busted all the way down to private, removed from his logistics and supply duties, and sent to the front lines as a rifleman. His demotion came just as the Three Hundred and Thirteenth Regiment began two months of continuous combat. Just after five a.m. on November eleventh, nineteen eighteen, British, French, and German negotiators signed an armistice to end the war. Under the agreement, all hostilities would cease at precisely eleven a.m. on that day. The six-hour difference was intended to allow time for the news of the war’s end to reach remote battlefields. Word of the war’s end reached the Three Hundred and Thirteenth Regiment when a runner arrived at ten forty-four a.m. Gunther’s brigade commander, Brigadier General William Nicholson, told his troops that there would be absolutely no letup until precisely eleven a.m. Another American drafted into military service was a young journalist, James M. Cain, who would later achieve fame as the famous author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, and wrote an account of Private Gunther’s actions in the final moments of the War to End All Wars. According to his companions, Gunther brooded a great deal over his reduction in rank and became obsessed with a determination to make good before his officers and fellow soldiers. Particularly, he was worried because he thought himself suspected of being a German sympathizer. He acquitted himself splendidly in the Montfu confit and on the drive east of the Mews. He was selected to act as a company runner—particularly dangerous work—for a runner is the bearer of important messages and must get them delivered, even if his way lies over the most exposed country. On November eleven, he was still on duty as a runner. His company had been ordered to advance on the Villa de von Chemont. Gunther, according to the men of Company A, must have been fired by a desire to demonstrate, even at the last minute, that he was courageous and all-American. At a few minutes to eleven, he announced that he was going to take that machine gun nest, and though his companions remonstrated and told him that in a few minutes the war would be over, he started out, armed with a Browning automatic rifle. When the Germans saw him coming, they waved at him and called out in such broken English as they could to go back, that the war was over. He paid no heed to them, however, and kept on firing a shot or two from his automatic as he went. After several vain efforts to make him turn back, the Germans turned the machine gun on him, and at one minute of eleven o’clock, Gunther fell dead. The guns stopped firing at eleven o’clock. A few seconds after, and a few minutes after, the German machine gun crew that had killed him came out with a stretcher and placed Gunther on it. They then carried him back to his party from Company A he had left but a short time before. They explained that they had tried to keep him from coming on and that they had to shoot him in self-defense. They insisted on shaking hands with the Americans, after which they set Gunther down and returned to their own lines. At ten fifty-nine a.m. on November eleven, Private Henry Gunther was killed one minute before guns went silent on the Western Front. He may have been proving his loyalty by following General Nicholson’s no-let-up order to the letter. He may have sought to erase all doubts and prove his allegiance to the American side. He may have suffered a mental breakdown from all that he’d seen during the two months of intense trench warfare. Or perhaps word hadn’t actually reached him that the war was over. If his motivation was to restore his reputation, the fatal tactic worked. In his order of the day, General John Pershing, responsible for all American Expeditionary Forces, officially recognized Henry N. Gunther as the last man killed in World War One. The Army posthumously restored Gunther to the rank of sergeant and awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross.

An A terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monte Montgomery, and a special thanks to Craig Du May of the Grateful Nation Project for telling this story in America’s history. We don’t gloss it over. We’ve done segments on the good and bad parts of our past, and during the war. World War One, it was the Germans, many of whom were mistreated, and in World War Two, it was the Japanese. We’re a good country, but we’re not a perfect country. And Henry Gunther, while he died proving to the people he knew and didn’t know, that he was a loyal member of the country. The story of Henry Gunther, the last man killed in World War One, here on Our American Stories.