LAST WWI DEATH
The last soldier killed in World War I was Pvt. Henry Gunther of Baltimore, MD. The official end of the shooting was supposed to coincide with the signing of the armistice at 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918. Pvt. Gunther was with Company A, 313th Infantry, 79th Division of the US Army as it advanced upon Metz near the German border. Gunther's platoon ran into an ambush. Enraged by the enemy machine-gun fire, Gunther charged the German position with fixed bayonet. At the very moment that a messenger arrived with word that the war was ending at 11:00 a.m., Gunther was shot through the left temple and left side, at 11:01. General Pershing's order of the day named him as the last American killed in the war. Posthumously, he received the Distinguished Service Cross.