Every war has its “last” events and on this 103rd anniversary of the end of The Great War, we have one for you, with the account of a former Jefferson City resident who was part of what arguably was the final American artillery attack on German positions.
Missouri’s own John J. Pershing found Private Henry N. Gunther of Baltimore, Maryland, died at 10:59 a.m. on November 11, 1918 in an unnecessary one-man attack on a German machine gun emplacement.
But another Missourian was involved in another “last,” or at least a “last of the last.”
Germany surrendered at 5 a.m. that day but French General Ferdinand Foch demanded the shooting stop six hours later so the message of the surrender could be distributed to the front lines on both sides. Author Joseph Persico in his book, Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour, calculated there were 11,000 casualties in those last six hours, including the deaths of 3,000 soldiers.
Former Jefferson City resident Charles D. Capelle, was with the American Red Cross. He sent a letter home describing his day, the last day of the war. The Daily Capital News published it on Christmas Eve.
I was sleeping in a dugout several miles beyond Verdun, with the commanding officer of an ambulance train. At eight o’clock, when we were still in bed, the telephone rang. The captain answered and the operator said, “I am asked to tell you that the armistice has been signed and that hostilities will cease at eleven this morning.” We told all the soldiers nearby, who at once set up a great yell and then refused the good news. After breakfast alI went up to a battery of 155’s nearby, knowing that if the news were true, the battery would cease firing at eleven o’clock. About ten they began firing all the guns regularly and sure enough, at five minutes before eleven they prepared to fire the last shot. The full gun crew at each gun took hold of hands and they put in the line on one gun, and with watch in hand all awaited the hour. “Then all pulled the lanyard together. “One last can for Jerry,” said the gunners, and then howled and skipped in their glee like a crowd of Indians. You may be sure, too, that I was as happy as they were.
For a long time none could realize that the whole thing was over. Out of the mud and cold, out of the holes in the ground, out of the shrapnel and machine-gun fire, and back to the real bed without “cooties”—finally—and that thought was in everybody’s mind—back in the U. S. A.
His letter continued for several paragraphs, describing pulling back to “shell-torn” Verdun, then farther to “a considerable town” where there were “all sorts of civilization” including an officer’s club where there was “wonder of wonders—a chance to take a bath.”
Capelle, a Jackson County native, had lived in Jefferson City while he was an assistant reporter for the Missouri Supreme Court, 1909-1915 and then a member of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles until 1917. He was about 35 when he went to France with the Red Cross and was attached to the 26th Infantry (Yankee) Division from Massachusetts (which included the 51st Field Artillery Brigade), where he witnessed the last shot of the war. He returned to Jackson County after the war, served as Mayor of Independence, 1922-24 and was elected in 1932 to a term in the Missouri House. He died at the age of 56 in 1939.
National Museum of the United States Army credits the final round of the war being fired by Battery E of the 11th Field Artillery, which fired a round from its 155 mm artillery piece, nicknamed Calamity Jane at exactly 11 a.m. on November 11, one minute after Capelle’s unit fired its last shot. We suppose there could be some discussion of whether a round fired at the precise second the armistice went into effect was fired during the war. The shot from the 11th FA landed after the war. The shot fired by the 56th FA probably landed before the official time of the Armistice. We’ll let World War One historians argue that. From a parochial standpoint, we come down in favor of Capelle’s account.