On November 11, 1918, Armistice Day, the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front in France suffered more than thirty-five hundred casualties, although it had been known unofficially for two days that the fighting would end that day and known with absolute certainty as of 5 o’clock that morning that it would end at 11 a.m. Nearly a year afterward, on November 5, 1919, General John J. Pershing, commander of the AEF, found himself testifying on the efficiency of the war’s prosecution before the House of Representatives Committee on Military Affairs.

The encounter was amicable and respectful since members were dealing with the officer who had led America to victory in the Great War. However, a Republican committee member, Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts, deferentially posed a provocative query: ‘This question is somewhat irrelevant to the matter under discussion,’ Fuller began, ‘but I would like to ask General Pershing if American troops were ordered over the top on the other side on the morning of the day when under the terms of the Armistice firing was to cease … and that those troops who were not killed or wounded marched peacefully into Germany at 11 o’clock. Is that true?’

Pershing answered with his customary crisp confidence:

Just days later, however, the congressman forwarded to Pershing a letter from a constituent with a cover note saying, “I have been deluged with questions on this subject.“ The enclosed letter had been written to Fuller by George K. Livermore, former operations officer of the 167th Field Artillery Brigade of the black 92nd Division, stating that that force had been engaged since 5 a.m. on November 11 and had been ordered to launch its final charge at 10:30 a.m. Livermore lamented “the little crosses over the graves of the colored lads who died a useless death on that November morning.“ He further described the loss of U.S. Marines killed crossing the Meuse River in the final hours as “frightful.“ Congressman Fuller closed his letter to Pershing asking for “a real frank, full answer to the question as to whether American lives were needlessly wasted.“

Fuller had Pershing’s answer within the week, and it was categorical. By allowing the fighting to go forward, Pershing reiterated that he was simply following the orders of his superior, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, commander in chief of Allied forces in France, issued on November 9, to keep up the pressure against the retreating enemy until the cease-fire went into effect. Consequently, he had not ordered his army to stop fighting even after the signing of the armistice, of which, “I had no knowledge before 6 a.m. November 11.“

The possibility of an armistice had begun the evening of November 7 when French soldiers of the 171st Régiment d’Infanterie near Haudroy were startled by an unfamiliar bugle call. Fearing they were about to be overrun, they cautiously advanced toward the increasingly loud blaring when out of the mantle of fog three automobiles emerged, their sides gilded with the imperial German eagle.

The astonished Frenchmen had encountered a German armistice delegation headed by a rotund forty-three-year-old politician and peace advocate named Matthias Erzberger. The delegation was escorted to the Compigne Forest near Paris where, in a railroad dining car converted into a conference room, they were met by a small, erect figure — Marshal Foch — who fixed them with a withering gaze.

Foch opened the proceeding with a question that left the Germans agape. “Ask these Gentlemen what they want,“ he said to his interpreter. When the Germans had recovered, Erzberger answered that they understood they had been sent to discuss armistice terms. Foch stunned them again: “Tell these gentlemen that I have no proposals to make.“

No proposals, perhaps, but he did have demands. Foch’s interpreter read aloud the Allied conditions, which struck the Germans like hammer blows: All occupied lands in Belgium, Luxembourg, and France — plus Alsace-Lorraine, held since 1870 by Germany — were to be evacuated within fourteen days; the Allies were to occupy Germany west of the Rhine and bridgeheads on the river’s east bank thirty kilometers deep; German forces had to be withdrawn from Austria-Hungary, Romania, and Turkey; Germany was to surrender to neutral or Allied ports 10 battleships, 6 battle cruisers, 8 cruisers, and 160 submarines. Germany was also to be stripped of heavy armaments, including 5,000 artillery pieces, 25,000 machine guns, and 2,000 airplanes.

The next demand threw the German delegates into despair. Though the German people already faced starvation, the Allies intended to paralyze the enemy’s transportation by continuing its naval blockade and confiscating 5,000 locomotives, 150,000 railway cars, and 5,000 trucks. The translator droned on through thirty-four conditions, the last of which blamed Germany for the war and demanded it pay reparations for all damage caused. Foch informed Erzberger that he had seventy-two hours to obtain the consent of his government to the Allies’ terms, or the war would go on.

On average, 2,250 troops on all sides were dying on the Western Front every day. “For God’s sake, Monsieur le Marechal,’ Erzberger pleaded, “do not wait for those seventy-two hours. Stop the hostilities this very day.“ The appeal fell on deaf ears. Before the meeting, Foch had described to his staff his intention “to pursue the Feldgrauen [field grays, or German soldiers] with a sword at their backs“ to the last minute until an armistice went into effect.

To Pershing the very idea of an armistice was repugnant. “Their request is an acknowledgment of weakness and clearly means that the Allies are winning the war,“ he maintained. “Germany’s desire is only to regain time to restore order among her forces, but she must be given no opportunity to recuperate and we must strike harder than ever.“

As for terms, Pershing had one response: “There can be no conclusion to this war until Germany is brought to her knees.“ The French and British Allies might be exhausted and long for peace, but Pershing saw his army akin to a fighter ready to deliver the knockout punch who is told to quit with his opponent reeling but still standing. Conciliation now, he claimed, would lead only to future war. He wanted Germany’s unconditional surrender.

The Germans finally yielded and signed the armistice at 5:10 on the morning of the eleventh, backed up officially to 5 a.m. and to take effect within Foch’s deadline: the eleventh month, eleventh day, eleventh hour of 1918. Pershing’s postwar claim that he had had no official knowledge of the impending armistice before being informed by Foch’s headquarters at 6 a.m. was disingenuous. The moment when the fighting would cease had been clear from the time Foch handed Erzberger the deadline, information to which Pershing was privy. On the evening of November 10 and through that night, news of the impending end was repeatedly affirmed from radio transmissions received at Pershing’s AEF headquarters in Chaumont.

After the general was apprised that the signing had taken place, the order going out from him merely informed subordinate commanders of that fact. It said nothing about what they should do until 11 o’clock, when the cease-fire would go into effect. His order left his commanders in a decisional no man’s land as to whether to keep fighting or spare their men in the intervening hours.

The generals left in that limbo fell roughly into two categories: ambitious careerists who saw a fast-fading opportunity for glory, victories, even promotions; and those who believed it mad to send men to their deaths to take ground that they could safely walk into within days.

Congressman Fuller’s mention of the loss of marines that final day referred to an action ordered by Maj. Gen. Charles P. Summerall, Pershing’s commander of the V Corps. No doubt had clouded Summerall’s mind as to how all this talk of an armistice on the eleventh should be treated. The day before he had gathered his senior officers and told them, “Rumors of enemy capitulation come from our successes.“ Consequently, this was no time to relax but rather to tighten the screws.

Summerall, a fifty-one-year-old Floridian, had spent three years teaching school before entering West Point. By the time he arrived on the Western Front he wore ribbons from the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and the Boxer Rebellion. He was a severe, unsmiling, some said brutal man who liked to turn out in prewar dress uniform with copious medals, gilded sashes, and fringed epaulettes — suggesting a viceroy of India rather than a plain American officer.

Because he had taught English, Summerall prided himself that he possessed a literary turn of phrase. “We are swinging the door by its hinges. It has got to move,“ he told his subordinates as he ordered them to cross the Meuse River on the war’s last day. “Only by increasing the pressure can we bring about [the enemy’s] defeat. … Get into action and get across.“ His parting shot was: “I don’t expect to see any of you again, but that doesn’t matter. You have the honor of a definitive success — give yourself to that.“

Was he referring to ending his present command over them, or foretelling their fate? In either case, Summerall was spurring them on to defeat an already defeated enemy, whatever the cost.

Among replacements rushed to the Meuse was Private Elton Mackin, 5th Marine Regiment. Soon after America entered the war, Mackin had read an article in the Saturday Evening Post about the Marine Corps that lured the baby-faced nineteen-year-old to enlist. He had thus far survived 156 days at the front, beginning with his regiment’s bloody baptism in the battle for Belleau Wood. Whether he would survive the last day depended on General Summerall’s decision, and the human price it would exact.

In the gray hours before dawn on November 11, Mackin’s regiment stumbled out of the Bois de Hospice, a wood on the west bank of the Meuse. The night was frigid, shrouded in fog and drizzle as the Marines tried to find their way to the river in the gloom. Army engineers had gone before them, throwing flimsy bridges across the water by lashing pontoons together, then running planks over the top. The first signs that the Marines were headed in the right direction were the bodies they stumbled upon, engineers killed attempting to construct the crossings.

At about 4 a.m., the Marines reached the first pontoon bridge, a rickety affair thirty inches wide with a guide rope strung along posts at knee height. They could see only halfway across before the bridge disappeared into the mist. Beyond, nothing was visible but the flash of enemy guns. The Marines began piling up at the bridgehead, awaiting orders. A major blew a whistle and stepped onto the bridge. As the men crowded behind him, the pontoons began to sink below the water sloshing about the men’s ankles. The engineers shouted to them to space themselves before the span collapsed.

Enemy shells began spewing up geysers, soaking the attackers with icy water. German Maxim machine guns opened fire, the rounds striking the wood sounding like a drumroll, those hitting flesh making a “sock, sock, sock“ sound. The span swung wildly in the strong current. Mackin saw the man ahead of him stumble between two pontoon sections and vanish into the black water.

The German guns’ bullets continued knocking men off the pontoons, like ducks in a shooting gallery. Still, the Americans kept coming. By 4:30 a.m. the marines and infantrymen of the 89th Division had taken Pouilly on the river’s east bank. In the remaining 6 1/2 hours they were to storm the heights above the town and clean out the machine gun nests.

As day broke, Mackin watched a runner come sprinting across the bridge. The message from General Summerall’s headquarters read only, “Armistice signed and takes effect at 11:00 o’clock this morning.“ Again, nothing was said about halting the fighting in the meantime. Mackin survived to write of his experience. But the Meuse River crossings had cost more than eleven hundred casualties in the hours just before the war’s end.

Numerous members of Congress, including Fuller, had received appeals from families wanting to know why such pointless expenditure of life had been allowed to happen. Congress had already created a Select Committee on Expenditures in the War Department to investigate procurement practices, the sufficiency and quality of weaponry, and waste and graft in supplying the AEF. To this body, the House decided to add a “Subcommittee 3“ to investigate the Armistice Day losses.

Royal Johnson, Republican from South Dakota, was appointed chairman to serve with another majority member, Republican Oscar Bland from Indiana, and a minority member, Daniel Flood, a Virginia Democrat. Johnson’s interest in the task assigned him was intensely personal. He was barely out of uniform himself. At age thirty-six, Johnson had taken leave from the House of Representatives and enlisted as a private in the 313th Regiment, ‘Baltimore’s Own,’ rising through the ranks to first lieutenant and earning the Distinguished Service Cross and Croix de Guerre.

Among the ranks of the 313th engaged on armistice morning was Henry N. Gunther, a fine-looking soldier in his mid-twenties, erect, with a clear-eyed gaze and a guardsman’s mustache that suggested a British subaltern rather than an American private. Gunther, however, had had difficulty with Army life. He came from a heavily German neighborhood in east Baltimore where the culture of his forebears remained strong. When the United States went to war, Gunther and his neighbors began to experience anti-German prejudice. In this poisonous atmosphere, Gunther felt no impulse to enlist. He was doing nicely at the National Bank of Baltimore and had a girlfriend, Olga Gruebl, who he intended to marry.

Nevertheless, Gunther was drafted five months after America entered the war. His closest pal, Ernest Powell, became platoon sergeant in Company A, while Gunther was appointed supply sergeant. “Supply sergeants were traditionally unpopular,“ Powell recalled. “Army clothing in the war, as they said at the time, came in two sizes — too large and too small.“ Supply sergeants took the brunt of the soldiers’ gripes, and Gunther began keeping to himself, his enthusiasm for army life well controlled.

After arriving in France in July 1918, he wrote a friend back home to stay clear of the war since conditions were miserable. An army censor passed the letter along to Gunther’s commanding officer, who broke the sergeant to private. Gunther then found himself serving under Ernie Powell, once his co-equal, a chafing humiliation. Thereafter, Powell observed Gunther becoming increasingly brooding and withdrawn.

By Armistice Day, the 313th had been engaged in nearly two months of uninterrupted combat. At 9:30 that morning, the regiment jumped off, bayonets fixed, rifles at port, heads bent, slogging through a marshland in an impenetrable fog toward their objective, a speck on the map called Ville-Devant-Chaumont. Its advance was to be covered by the 311th Machine Gun Battalion. But in the fog, the gunners had no idea where to direct their fire, and Company A thus moved along in an eerie silence. Suddenly, German artillery opened up, and men began to fall.

At sixteen minutes before 11, a runner caught up with the 313th’s parent 157th Brigade to report that the armistice had been signed. Again, the message made no mention of what to do in the interim. Brigadier General William Nicholson, commanding the brigade, made his decision: ‘There will be absolutely no let-up until 11:00 a.m.’ More runners were dispatched to spread the word to the farthest advanced regiments, including Gunther’s. The 313th now gathered below a ridge called the Côte Romagne. Two German machine gun squads manning a roadblock watched, disbelieving, as shapes began emerging from the fog. Gunther and Sergeant Powell dropped to the ground as bullets sang above their heads.

The Germans then ceased firing, assuming that the Americans would have the good sense to stop with the end so near. Suddenly, Powell saw Gunther rise and begin loping toward the machine guns. He shouted for Gunther to stop. The machine gunners waved him back, but Gunther kept advancing. The enemy reluctantly fired a five-round burst. Gunther was struck in the left temple and died instantly. The time was 10:59 a.m. General Pershing’s order of the day would later record Henry Gunther as the last American killed in the war.

To question officers as to why men like Gunther had been exposed to death at literally the eleventh hour, the Republicans on Subcommittee 3 hired as counsel a recently retired army lawyer, Samuel T. Ansell. A forty-five-year-old West Pointer, Ansell had served as acting judge advocate general during the war and left the Army specifically to take the congressional job for the then-substantial salary of twenty thousand dollars per year.

His first move was to have all senior American commanders who had led troops on the Western Front answer these questions: ‘What time on the morning of November 11, 1918, were you notified of the signing of the armistice? What orders were you and your command under with respect to operations against the enemy immediately before and up to the moment of such notification and after notification and up to 11 o’clock? After receipt of such notification did your command or any part of it continue to fight? If so, why and with what casualties? Did your command or any part of it continue the fight after 11 o’clock? If so, why and with what casualties?’

Ansell proved a fire-breathing prosecutor, ill concealing his premise that lives had indeed been thrown away on the war’s last day. Among the first witnesses he called was Pershing’s chief of operations, Brig. Gen. Fox Conner. Proud, ruggedly handsome, and a wily witness, Conner admitted that, pursuant to Foch’s order to keep the pressure on, one American army, the 2nd under Lt. Gen. Robert Lee Bullard, had actually moved an assault originally planned for November 11 up to November 10 “to counteract the idea among the troops that the Armistice had already been signed“ and “to influence the German delegates to sign.“

Not all commanders shared the view that Germany had to be pressured to sign. For days the Germans had shown no stomach to engage the Allies and carried out only rear-guard actions as they fell back. On armistice morning, the commander of the 32nd Division, Maj. Gen. William Haan, received a field telephone call from his subordinate commanding the 63rd Brigade asking permission to attack in order to straighten out a dent on his front. Haan retorted that he did not intend to throw away men’s lives on the war’s last morning to tidy up a map. The 32nd initiated no attacks while Haan’s men waited and took losses only from artillery fire.

Hotshot commanders nevertheless managed to find reasons to advance. Stenay was a town held by the Germans on the east bank of the Meuse. The 89th Division’s commander, Maj. Gen. William M. Wright, determined to take Stenay because “the division had been in the line a considerable period without proper bathing facilities, and since it was realized that if the enemy were permitted to stay in Stenay, our troops would be deprived of the probable bathing facilities there.“ Thus, placing cleanliness above survival, Wright sent a brigade to take the town. As the doughboys passed through Pouilly, a 10.5cm howitzer shell landed in their midst, killing twenty Americans outright. All told, Wright’s division suffered 365 casualties, including sixty-one dead in the final hours. Stenay would be the last town taken by the Americans in the war. Within days, it too could have been marched into peacefully rather than paid for in blood.

Bland, the other Republican on Subcommittee 3, knifed quickly to the heart of the matter when his turn came to question General Conner. “Do you know of any good reason,“ Bland asked, “why the order to commanders…should not have been that the Armistice had been signed to take effect at 11 o’clock and that actual hostilities or fighting should cease as soon as possible in order to save human life?“ Conner conceded that American forces “would not have been jeopardized by such an order, if that is what you mean.“

Bland then asked, regarding Pershing’s notification to his armies merely that hostilities were to cease at 11 a.m., “Did the order leave it up to the individual commanders to quit firing before or to go ahead firing until 11 o’clock?“ “Yes,“ Conner answered. Bland then asked, “In view of the fact that we had ambitious generals in this Army, who were earnestly fighting our enemies and who hated to desist from doing so … would it have been best under the circumstances to have included in that order that hostilities should cease as soon as practicable before 11 o’clock?“ Conner answered firmly, “No sir, I do not.“

“How many generals did you lose on that day?“ Bland went on. “None,“ Conner replied. “How many colonels did you lose on that day?“ Conner: “I do not know how many were lost.“ “How many lieutenant colonels did you lose on that day?“ Conner: “I do not know the details of any of that.“ “I am convinced,“ Bland continued, “that on November 11 there was not any officer of very high rank taking any chance of losing his own life. …“

Conner, visibly seething, retorted, “The statement made by you, I think, Mr. Bland, is exceedingly unjust, and, as an officer who was over there, I resent it to the highest possible degree.“

Bland shot back, “I resent the fact that these lives were lost and the American people resent the fact that these lives were lost; and we have a right to question the motive, if necessary, of the men who have occasioned this loss of life.“ With that, Conner was dismissed.

Also called to testify was the second highest ranking officer in the AEF, Lt. Gen. Hunter Liggett, who had commanded the First Army. Under questioning by the subcommittee’s counsel, Liggett admitted to Ansell that the only word passed along to the troops was that “the Armistice had been signed and hostilities would cease at 11 o’clock, Paris time.“ Ansell forced Liggett to agree that orders from AEF headquarters had left subordinate commanders in the dark as to their next course of action.

The corpulent old general shifted responsibility to the commander on the scene “to judge very quickly from whatever was going on in his immediate neighborhood.“ Coupling Foch’s “keep fighting“ order and Pershing’s relaying of it, Ansell said, “I have difficulty to discover authority in any division commander under the terms of those two orders to cease advancing or cease firing on his front before 11 o’clock no matter what time he got the notice announcing the Armistice.“ Ansell added, suppose such a commander concluded: “I am in a situation where I can desist from the attack, and I am going to do so and save the lives of the men. Would you consider he had used bad judgment?“ Liggett did not hesitate: “If I had been a division commander, I would not have done that.“

At that point subcommittee Chairman Johnson interjected a personal experience in France occurring soon after the armistice while he was visiting a hospital: “I met several subordinate officers who were wounded on November 11, some seriously. Without exception, they construed the orders which forced them to make an attack after the armistice as murder and not war.“ Asked if he had ever heard such accusations, Liggett answered, “No!“ With that, he too was dismissed.

Brigadier General John Sherburne, former artillery commander of the black 92nd Division who had returned to civilian life, provided the Republican members of the subcommittee with what they most wanted: the views of a decorated noncareer officer who felt no obligation to absolve the army. A white officer with the division, Sherburne described the joy his black troops expressed near midnight on November 10 when the sky “was lighted up with rockets, roman candles, and flares that the Germans were sending up.“

This persuasive evidence of the approaching end was further confirmed, he said, when soon after midnight a wireless message intercepted from the Eiffel Tower reported: “The Armistice terms had been accepted and … hostilities were going to cease. My recollection is that in that wireless message the hour of 11 o’clock was stated as the time.“ Sherburne’s testimony made clear that the men in the trenches had persuasive information nearly twelve hours in advance that the war’s end was at hand, though Pershing had told Congress that he had had no knowledge that the armistice was about to be signed until he was notified at 6 a.m.

At Ansell’s urging, Sherburne went on to describe how he and his operations officer, Captain George Livermore, author of the letter to Congressman Fuller, had then telephoned divisional, corps, and army headquarters to find out, since the armistice had been signed, if an attack by the 92nd from the Bois de Voivrotte set for that morning could be called off. All up and down the chain of command, Sherburne testified, he was informed that the order stood. Ansell asked the effect of this order on the troops. “I cannot express the horror that we all felt,“ Sherburne said. “The effect of what we all considered an absolutely needless waste of life was such that I do not think any unit that I commanded took any part in any celebration of the armistice, and even failed to rejoice that the war was over.“

“Who in your judgment was responsible for this fighting?“ Ansell asked. Sherburne hesitated. “It is pretty poor testimony to have gossip,“ he answered. Ansell pressed him to go on. Sherburne then said:

It was, Sherburne went on, difficult for conscientious officers to resist direction from Chaumont, no matter how questionable. He admitted that even in a situation where his own life was at stake, he would have yielded to pressure from the general staff. “I would far rather have been killed,“ he told the subcommittee, “than to be demoted.“

The 33rd was another division engaged to the last minute. As the unit’s historian later described the final day:

The 81st Division took the severest blow that morning. One of its regimental commanders had told his men to take cover during the last hours, only to have his order countermanded. With forty minutes left in the war, the troops were ordered to “Advance at once.“ The division reported 461 casualties that morning, including sixty-six killed.

The Army claimed to have put a hundred clerks to work on the subcommittee’s request for the number of AEF casualties that occurred from midnight November 10 to 11 o’clock the next morning. The figures provided by the adjutant general’s office were 268 killed in action and 2,769 seriously wounded. These figures, however, failed to include divisions fighting with the British and French north of Paris and do not square with reports from individual units on the ground that day. The official tally for the 28th Division, for example, showed zero men killed in action on November 11, but in individual reports from field officers requested by the subcommittee, the commander of one brigade alone of the 28th reported for that date, ‘My casualties were 191 killed and wounded.’ Taking into account the unreported divisions and other underreported information, a conservative total of 320 Americans killed and more than 3,240 seriously wounded in the last hours of the war is closer to the fact.

By the end of January 1920, Subcommittee 3 concluded its hearings. Chairman Johnson drafted the final report, arriving at a verdict that “needless slaughter“ had occurred on November 11, 1918. The full Select Committee on Expenditures in the War chaired by Congressman W.J. Graham initially adopted this draft.

Subcommittee 3’s Democratic member, Flood, however, filed a minority report charging that Johnson’s version defamed America’s victorious leadership, particularly Pershing, Liggett, and Bullard. Flood saw politics at work. The country had gone to war under a Democratic president. By 1918 the Republicans had won control of Congress, and it was they who had initiated the Armistice Day investigation. By the time the inquiry ended, Wilson’s hopes for the United States’ entering into the League of Nations were fast sinking and critics were questioning why America had gone to war in the first place.Flood suspected that the Republicans on the subcommittee were inflating the significance of the events of the last day, “trying to find something to criticize in our Army and the conduct of the war by our government.“

The committee, he claimed, had “reached out for those witnesses who had grievances. …” As for Ansell, whom he repeatedly referred to as the “$20,000 counsel,“ he had “been permitted to browbeat the officers of the Army.“ Flood also hinted that the lawyer had left the War Department, “with whom he is known to have quarreled,“ under a cloud. Finally, Flood argued that the select committee had been created to investigate wartime expenditures and not to second-guess generals on “matters beyond the jurisdiction of the committee.“

Flood’s dissent, with its patriotic ring, found enough sympathy that Chairman Graham took a rare step. He recalled the already approved Johnson report. Three hours of acrimonious debate followed.

In the end, Johnson bowed to pressure not to hold up the select committee’s report any further, and on March 3 he struck from his draft any imputation that American lives had been needlessly sacrificed on Armistice Day. The New York Times took the Dan Flood view, editorializing that the charge of wasted life “has impressed a great many civilians as being well founded. … [But,] the civilian view [that] there should have been no shot fired if the commander of a unit had been notified of the signing is, of course, untenable. … Orders are orders.“

American forces weren’t alone in launching assaults on the last day. The British high command, still stinging from its retreat at Mons during the first days of the war in August 1914, judged that nothing could be more appropriate than to retake the city on the war’s final day. British Empire losses on November 11 totaled some twenty-four hundred. The French commander of the 80th Régiment d’Infanterie received two simultaneous orders that morning: one to launch an attack at 9 a.m., the other to cease fire at 11. Total French losses on the final day amounted to an estimated 1,170.

The Germans, in the always-perilous posture of retreat, suffered some 4,120 casualties. Losses on all sides that day approached eleven thousand dead, wounded, and missing.

Indeed, Armistice Day exceeded the ten thousand casualties suffered by all sides on D-Day, with this difference: The men storming the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, were risking their lives to win a war. The men who fell on November 11, 1918, lost their lives in a war that the Allies had already won.

Had Marshal Foch heeded the appeal of Matthias Erzberger on November 8 to stop hostilities while the talks went on, some sixty-six hundred lives would likely have been saved. In the end, Congress found no one culpable for the deaths that had occurred during the last day, even the last hours of World War I. The issue turned out much as General Sherburne predicted in his testimony. Soon, except among their families, the men who died for nothing when they might have known long life “would all be forgotten.“

Joseph E. Persico authored numerous books, including “Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage.” This article is based on ”Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day 1918, World War I and Its Violent Climax.” Persico died in 2014.

As a child I often heard my father, who lived through those tumultuous times, quote its familiar opening lines:

In Flanders fields/The poppies blow/Between the crosses/Row on row

The author was the Canadian doctor, soldier, author and artist John McCrae. Born in Ontario in 1872 and educated in public schools, he was only 15 when he joined the local militia, which was commanded by his father. He started out as a bugler.

Later, he won a scholarship to the University of Toronto, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and went on to study medicine. Graduating at the top of his class, he did his residency at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Throughout his schooling, McCrae kept his ties with the military and advanced to the rank of lieutenant in his hometown militia. He also was a member of the Toronto militia, The Queen’s Own Rifles, and became its commander and a captain.

Besides writing poetry, McCrae was the author of scientific articles, medical textbooks and short stories. Throughout his life he made numerous, beautiful sketches of what he saw.

After his medical training, he was awarded a fellowship at McGill University but postponed enrolling to serve his country in the Boer War. He went to South Africa in 1900 as commander of D Battery of the Royal Canadian Artillery. Though he felt it was important to serve, he left the war disturbed by the poor treatment of the sick and wounded.

McCrae returned to Canada in 1905 and then took a position at the University of Vermont teaching pathology. Years later, when World War I broke out, he enlisted. In the fall of 1914, he was made brigade surgeon with the rank of major, second in command, and was sent to Belgium. Most Canadians and Brits entered Europe across the English Channel into the Flanders region of Belgium.

McCrae’s job was almost impossible. Some 5,000 men would die in just a short time. McCrae would later write, “I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days. … Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.”

The death of a young friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, was particularly difficult. On May 2, 1915, Helmer was killed when a shell burst at his feet. Because no chaplain was available, McCrae performed the burial ceremony for his friend and countryman.

Though there are several different accounts of how Helmer’s death inspired the poem, this is the one probably told most often. The day after burying his friend, McCrae sat on the back of an ambulance and poured out his grief on paper. Sergeant Major Cyril Allison, who was nearby as he wrote, later said, “The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.”

McCrae later threw away his poem, but fortunately it was retrieved by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Morrison, a former newspaper editor. Morrison sent it to several London publications, and it was published by Punch magazine on December 8, 1915.

WHY POPPIES?

Gardening experts tell us that poppies grow and thrive only in soil that is frequently disturbed. When McCrae wrote his poem, the tumult of battle had uprooted the whole front. Poppies were in bloom all over the Flanders landscape.

Like the blood spilled from thousands of soldiers, this poppy was red. The red corn poppy (Papaver rheoeas) was native to Europe and also was prominent in the Napoleonic Wars.

“In Flanders Fields” became an instant favorite all over the world. It was particularly popular in Canada and the U.S. Ads featuring lines from it helped raise $400 million for the war effort in Canada alone.

His poem went on to achieve immortality, appearing on Canadian $10 bills and a 1968 commemorative stamp. It inspired songs by Canadian composers Michael Roberts and Jon Brooks and the American John Philip Sousa. Proceeds from the sale of poppies were used to benefit disabled veterans.

In the United States, Moina Michael, a Georgia teacher and YMCA volunteer, was so taken with the poem that she wrote a poem in response titled “We Shall Keep the Faith.” It began:

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,

Sleep sweet — to rise anew!

We caught the torch you threw

And holding high, we keep the Faith

With All who died.

Michael resolved to make the poppy a reminder of McCrae and millions of others who lost their lives in war. She mounted a long campaign that led the American Legion to adopt the red poppy in 1920 as its symbol of remembrance.

McCrae did not live to see all this. In 1918 McCrae had been named consulting surgeon for the entire British army, but the war had left him weary and unhealthy. Late in January 1918 he developed pneumonia and meningitis. He died on January 28 and was buried with full military honors at Wimereux, France, where poppies grow.

Editor’s note: This piece was originally published by MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, in 2011. For more on MHQ and other HistoryNet publications, go here.

Beatrice Mary MacDonald returned to service after a 1917 bombing cost her an eye.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of National Purple Heart Hall of Honor

The medals: The nurses received the Distinguished Service Cross for their actions. The awards marked the first ground combat actions to merit such recognition in World War I, according to Sterner; the American Expeditionary Forces had barely arrived in France at the time, and U.S. troops didn’t join the trenches in large numbers until the fall of 1917, with most major battles occurring the following year.

MacDonald would remain in service despite her injury: “I’ve only started doing my bit,” she said, according to a Harvard University piece outlining material from her scrapbook. McClelland would serve as the director of the Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing for 23 years until her retirement in 1956.

Despite the surge of World War I remembrances surrounding the centennial of America’s involvement, the nurses’ actions rarely received mention.

Helen Grace McClelland worked in nursing for nearly four decades after receiving the Distinguished Service Cross.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Pennsylvania Hospital Historic Collections, Philadelphia

Key quote: “It is interesting to note that this cross is to be conferred upon a woman and a nurse,” said War Secretary Newton Baker, during the presentation of MacDonald’s award in 1919.

“This war has, of course, taken the nurses, who are the ministers of mercy, up to the very front lines of battle,” Baker added, “and because of the carrying of the war into the third dimension, the airplane has, of course, made their task more perilous.”

The film is set to debut April 18. The World War I Centennial Commission has been involved in the project, officially endorsing the film in 2015.

The German government decided to withdraw its refueling and reconnaissance aircraft from Turkey’s Incirlik base after Turkish officials refused to let lawmakers visit the roughly 270 German troops there. They will move to Azraq, Jordan.

Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen told Sunday’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper that the refueling plane will be moved as quickly as possible after the end of June and should be back in service in the second half of July.

Von der Leyen says moving the six Tornado reconnaissance planes will take two months, from August to September. Those planes should be fully back in service from October.

A soldier of the German Armed Forces Bundeswehr wears a badge of the combat wing (Einsatzgeschwader) Counter Daesh Incirlik on Jan. 21, 2016, while standing next to a German Tornado jet in a hangar at the air base in Incirlik, Turkey.

Photo Credit: Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images

Not bad for a dog. Especially one that’s been dead for more than 90 years.

The story of Stubby, commonly referred to as Sgt. Stubby, is one of great service, trust and loyalty. It began in Connecticut, crossed the Atlantic into the battles of World War I, and returned home to a hero’s welcome. After a lifetime of honors at the side of his owner, James Robert Conroy, Stubby died in 1926, received a 15-paragraph obituary in the New York Times, and would eventually become part of the Smithsonian’s collection — his coat, laid over a cast, is on display at the National Museum of American History.

However, the details that make up the stuff of legend — the animated “Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero,” is set to hit theaters in April — are a bit hazy. Chief among them: The dog’s rank.

“I’m quite convinced that he was promoted by the internet,” said Ann Bausum, who has written two books about Stubby. “It sounds so good, we want it to be true … and one of these reasons I think this isn’t true is that there is not a single contemporary story from his lifetime, and I looked at hundreds of newspaper articles of Stubby, there is not a single one that calls him ‘Sgt. Stubby.'”

Part of the confusion may come from Stubby’s vest, which includes a patch with three chevrons. While they may represent a sergeant’s rank today, they were used in World War I to identify soldiers — and, apparently, dogs — with overseas service.

“He was just ‘Stubby,'” Bausum said. “And that was good enough for him.”

IVY LEAGUE BEGINNINGS

Stubby was no ordinary stray dog, but that’s how he started out: One day he happened to show up at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where soldiers were training prior to deploying for France during World War I.

He came in with his stubby little tail and won the hearts of the men training there — he was taken along for the deployment, though the exact details on how Stubby made it to France aren’t certain. It’s said that then-Pvt. Conroy stowed him away on the soldiers’ ship, and when found, Stubby saluted the commander. That gesture earned him passage for the rest of the journey.

In France, Stubby was said to have saved the entire division by finding and detaining a German spy. His New York Times obituary breathlessly relays the tale, saying the dog “stole out of the trenches and recognized — a German.”

“Attempts by the German to deceive the dog were futile,” the obituary notes.

It’s also said Stubby learned when bombs where inbound and would warn the soldiers prior to the explosion.

So, if even some of the legend is true, was Stubby a so-called “war dog,” or a precursor to the modern military working dog, or a mascot?

“My grandfather was always clear: He was a service dog,” said Curt Deane, Conroy’s grandson. “He gave the troops comfort, he gave them support. He used to run through the trenches and warn them about gas attacks. He used to go outside of the trenches and into this sort of no-man’s land, between the U.S. and the German trenches, and stand by soldiers who had been injured until the medics could come and get them.”

‘WHERE’S STUBBY?’

All those heroics didn’t necessarily make Stubby a model soldier. One of the most frequent questions asked by Conroy and his fellow soldiers with 102nd Infantry Regiment, 26th Infantry Division, was, “Where’s Stubby?”

“Stubby would disappear for weeks at a time,” Deane said, “and the guys would kind of have no idea where he was, and there was this whole fear that he had been killed or whatever. And my grandfather would say, ‘He always came back with his head held high and his stubby tail up in the air’ and knew right where my grandfather was.

“It was amazing. And these troops wouldn’t stay still — they were moving around, but he always came right back and knew exactly where my grandfather was.” 

The dog even, somehow, returned to Conroy’s unit after he’d been “adopted” by French soldiers, Bausum said. Like many Stubby tales, details are thin, but he was back with the 102nd in time to return to the U.S., where he continued his service to the troops.

“There were these massive conventions at various cities, annual conventions around the country, and Stubby would go to those and he would be revered,” Bausum said. “He would march in the parades, he would make newspaper headlines.”

He was “known to three presidents,” according to his New York Times obituary. He had his picture taken with Gen. John “Blackjack” Pershing, the highest-ranking service member since George Washington. He was an official mascot for Georgetown University (where Conroy studied law) and an honorary member of the American Red Cross, the American Legion and the YMCA — which gave him a place to sleep and up to three bones a day.

A BREED APART

Why did his story catch on? Bausum said she sees Stubby as a product of his time.

“The backdrop for it was this horrendous, horrendous war, just the volume of destruction was just so unfathomable, just sending people out in cloth uniforms against machine gun fire, just the waste, makes it a very dark war,” she said. “And yet there was this story that ran through it that had so much hope in it.”

Stubby didn’t escape unscathed. He was wounded and gassed, according to the New York Times obituary.

(His coat sits alongside Cher Ami, a decorated carrier pigeon known for its service during World War I.)

Army Gen. John J. Pershing decorates Stubby during an award ceremony.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Division of Armed Forces History

Stubby died in Conroy’s arms March 16, 1926. The dog’s loyalty and tenacity have earned praise for more than a century, and have also led to some disagreement among dog lovers about Stubby’s breed, which has never been known.

“I’ve come to view him as sort of like a Rorschach blot, where people look at these blots of ink and individuals can see all different manners of things in the shape, and they sort of see what they want to see,” Bausum said.

“If you love boxers, he’s a boxer. Or if you’re a pit bull fan, he’s a pit bull. … When you say that he’s a Boston terrier, people say, ‘Well he sure doesn’t look like a Boston Terrier,’ but he did look like what was then a Boston terrier.”

STUBBY ON SCREEN 

“Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero,” is set for an April 13 release. Among those lending their voices to the Hollywood-ized tale of Conroy and his dog are Helena Bonham Carter, who’ll play Conroy’s sister, and Gérard Depardieu, set to portray Gaston Baptiste, “a battle-tested mentor to Sgt. Stubby,” according to a news release from Fun Academy Motion Pictures Studio.

As the film approaches, Deane said plans are underway to commemorate Stubby’s life, and the bond he shared with his owner, in other ways. Talks are underway with the American Red Cross to allow sales of a plush Stubby doll to benefit the nonprofit’s program that sends dogs to visit soldiers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Bethesda, Maryland.

“Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero” is set to debut in theaters in the spring of 2018.

Photo Credit: Jordan Beck/Fun Academy Motion Pictures

“Stubby, originally after he died, spent a lot of time in the lobby of the American Red Cross in Washington,” Deane said, “so the thought is to have a statue of Stubby at the American Red Cross because he was a permanent member.”

As his grandfather told stories about Stubby, it became clear to Deane that Conroy never quite let go of his heroic dog. Deane promised his grandfather that he “would do everything possible to keep Stubby’s memory alive.”

“I used to always ask him why he never got another dog,” Deane said of his grandfather, “and he made it very clear to me that Stubby was so special and so unique that he just couldn’t imagine another dog being able to fill that role.”

Many of us do not appreciate the significance of World War I and the immeasurable impact it had on the 20th century and our lives. The period of U.S. involvement not only brought social and economic growth and innovation, but also the intellectual foundation for our current understanding of the psychological wounds of war.

The most notable of those wounds is post-traumatic stress disorder, now simply referred to as PTSD. And while the naming convention is relatively new, the notion of combat-induced trauma is far from it.

Even before the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, thousands of British soldiers who participated in the fighting had been made combat ineffective by tremors, loss of balance, headaches and other symptoms. Military doctors believed the symptoms were a neurological manifestation of shock waves caused by exploding shells, resulting in the inaccurate label of “shell shock.” Others considered these soldiers weak, or labeled them as cowards or malingerers who deserved discipline.

Early treatments for shell shock utilized shock therapy, frontal lobotomies, institutionalization and at times, harsh discipline. While considered crude and inappropriate today, these were the best options the medical community had based on its understanding of the condition.

Understanding of the psychological wounds of combat improved during World War II, as the term “battle fatigue” dominated the psychiatric nomenclature. And while many military leaders like Gen. George S. Patton still viewed the condition as a byproduct of cowardice, the front-line medics knew it was not that simple. Treatments became more humane and included rest away from front lines, counseling, and medications.

Television brought the Vietnam War into our homes with images of returning veterans, angry and often struggling with PTSD. While PTSD rates were low in the early years of the war, they rose to about 30 percent toward its close: Exact reasons are unknown, but perhaps the rates were tied to the lack of support and welcome from the American public.

Today, 16 years into the longest period of war in our nation’s history, we are still fighting PTSD. The prevalence rate in Post-9/11 veterans hasn’t changed from that of their predecessors from earlier conflicts.

What also hasn’t significantly changed are the treatments we’ve provided our veterans over the past several decades – largely talk-therapy and pharmaceuticals. While we have made advances in treatments since World War I, the numbers reveal that we haven’t won this fight.

It’s estimated that between 500,000 to 700,000 post-9/11 veterans are struggling with the symptoms of PTSD, and that only half of them seek treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department. Of those, a much smaller number of veterans actually complete treatment and report improvement.

More than 100 years after “shell shock,” it’s time to turn our approach to PTSD on its head and teach our veterans how to capitalize on their struggles. Let’s get away from the medical model that reduces our combat veterans to a set of symptoms and start harnessing their inner strength and turn their struggles into new possibilities, purpose and meaning.

Bret A. Moore, left, and Ken Falke

Photo Credit: Courtesy photos

Stressing this type of approach – known as posttraumatic growth, or PTG – won’t replace talk-therapy or medication. But by leveraging veterans’ inner strength and resources, and encouraging them to explore new possibilities for psychological, relational, and spiritual growth, they can be helped to recognize what they have gained from their combat experiences versus what they have lost.

Bret A. Moore, Psy.D., is a former Army psychologist, veteran of the Iraq War and writer who lives in San Antonio. He’s the co-author of “The Posttraumatic Growth Workbook” and writes Military Times’ monthly “Kevlar for the Mind” feature.

Ken Falke is a retired Navy master chief. He’s chairman and founder of both the Boulder Crest Retreat for Military and Veteran Wellness and the EOD Warrior Foundation.

“The series explores the experiences of African-American and Latino soldiers, suffragists, Native-American “code talkers” and others whose participation in the war to ‘make the world safe for democracy,’” according to PBS’s description of the series.

The series will also examine the behind the scenes events that led America out of neutrality and into war.

“‘The Great War’ also explores how a brilliant PR man bolstered support for the war in a country hesitant to put lives on the line for a foreign conflict; how President Woodrow Wilson steered the nation through almost three years of neutrality,” writes PBS.

The series will also look at how America’s efforts to bring freedom and liberty abroad ended up bringing large scale oppression to civil liberties at home.

For a sneak peak of the documentary, PBS released this clip from the series about the start of the war for America:

‘The Great War’ premiers with part one on Monday, April 10 from 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS. Parts two and three will air at the same time on April 11 and 12.

In many respects, however, the U.S. Navy (and the U.S. Army, too) were far from being ready to go to war. The U.S. had tried very hard to stay out of the First World War and the horrific carnage of millions of futile deaths that characterized the war.

The British naval blockade of Germany, which disrupted U.S. trade to Europe, angered the U.S. almost as much as German actions. Even the sinking of the liner SS Lusitania by a German U-boat in 1915, and the loss of 128 of the 139 American civilians on board, was not enough to overcome intense opposition in the U.S. to going to war.

Only belatedly did President Woodrow Wilson and Congress authorize serious preparations and a massive naval buildup (the Naval Act of 1916), but none of those new ships would be ready by the time the U.S. declared war on April 6, 1917, resulting from the German’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare that February.

World War I would profoundly change the U.S. Navy, and naval warfare, ever after. The rapid building program created the second-largest navy in the world. Two U.S. technological innovations early in the war, underway refueling and reliable radio-telephones, were significant in defeating the U-boat threat and revolutionized naval warfare.

Social change in the Navy also was profound. Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, a strong proponent of rapid technological development, also implemented programs aimed at improving the training, safety and living standards (and morals) of the Navy’s enlisted ranks. In March 1917, Loretta Perfectus Walshwould enlist as the first “Yeoman (F),” and 13,000 more women would follow.

Conversely, Daniels implemented racial segregation in the Navy, ending the full integration of blacks that had been the case in the enlisted ranks since at least the War of 1812.

In the end, the key contribution of the U.S. Navy was to prevent U-boats from sinking the transport ships that safely delivered 2 million U.S. troops to the Western Front in France — where they were then killed in large numbers, but which decisively changed the course of the war, resulting in Germany’s rapid defeat after years of bloody stalemate.   

Retired Rear Adm. Samuel J. Cox

Photo Credit: Courtesy photos

Retired Rear Adm. Samuel J. Cox is the d

irector of Naval History and Heritage Command. His piece was provided to Military Times by the World War I Centennial Commission; for more on the commission, including their work to create a National World War I Memorial in Washington, visit

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