Henry Gunther

Henry Gunther
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
Known for	The soldier who died one minute before the end of World War I
Battles/wars	World War I Meuse-Argonne Offensive †
Awards	Distinguished Service Cross

Henry Nicholas John Gunther (June 6, 1895 – November 11, 1918) was an American soldier and possibly the last soldier of any of the belligerents to be killed during

Gunther had recently been demoted, and was seeking to regain his rank just before the war ended.[3]

Early life

Henry Gunther was born into a German-American family in east

Being of recent German-American heritage, Gunther did not automatically enlist in the armed forces as many others did soon after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. In September 1917, he was drafted and assigned to the 313th Infantry 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 to private.^[3][6]

Gunther's unit, Company 'A', arrived at the

On "

• Albert Mayer, the first soldier killed, 1914
• George Edwin Ellison, the last British Army soldier killed, 1918
• George Lawrence Price, the last Canadian Army and British Empire/Commonwealth soldier killed, 1918
• Marcel Toussaint Terfve, the last Belgian soldier killed in World War I, 1918
• Augustin Trébuchon, the last French Army soldier killed, 1918
• John Parr, the first British Army soldier killed, 1914
• Jules-André Peugeot, the first French Army soldier killed, 1914
• History of the Germans in Baltimore

References

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