The Last Official Death of WWI Was a Man Who Sought Redemption

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H/T History.com.

R.I.P. Sergeant Henry Gunther.

The six-hour delay between the armistice signing and World War I’s official end cost the lives of nearly 3,000 soldiers, including one American in the war’s final minute.

Henry Gunther was recorded as the last official American death World War I. Gunther was one of at least 2,738 troops and 320 Americans to die on the Western Front on the war’s final day

Concord/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

Shortly after 5 a.m. on November 11, 1918, German, British and French officials gathered inside a railroad dining car in a dark forest north of Paris and signed an armistice to end World War I. Rejecting German calls to immediately halt hostilities, Allied commander Ferdinand Foch dictated that the guns would fall silent at 11 a.m. in part to allow news of the cease-fire to be transmitted to the front lines.

“There was also the symbolic reason…

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