1. The German armistice delegation meets with Foch and refers Allied terms back to Berlin by 1300.
2. Senior German commanders inform the Chancellor that the German Army cannot be relied upon to suppress domestic insurrections, essentially informing the German government that they do not back the government due to the unreliability of their troops and implying that Kaiser Wilhelm must go.
The action seals the fate of the Kaiser and amounted to the leadership of the German army siding with the ongoing existence, they hoped, of their army over that of their Kaiser. While their declaration that German soldiers were in fact unreliable (front line troops were more reliable than those in Germany, and the navy was completely unreliable) was both rational and correct, rationality came a bit late in the day. It would ultimately result in the survival of the German army as an institution which would tragically lead to the Nazis and World War Two.
3. British capture Avesnes and cross the Schledt.
4. The People's State of Bavaria was declared in Bavaria as a self declared Bavarian socialist state. None of its leaders were Bavarian.
5. Ernest August, King of Wuerttemberg and Duke of Brunswick, abdicated his thrown in Brunswick.
Ernest August, King of Wuertemmberg and Duke of Brunswick.
6. Crowds gather in Berlin demanding the resignation of the Kaiser. Troops occupy essential services.
1. It happened the day prior, November 5, 1918, but on this day the news of the Republican landslide that swept the nation hit the press, including the Wyoming press, where GOP candidates swept the field.
The news was surprising in some ways. Wilson had done nationally, as had the Democrats, in recent elections, following the Republican civil war that had caused the party to split. But something about the war changed everything, as wars do, and even though Americans had solidly backed the war effort, or at least most Americans had, going into the peace they were rejecting the President and his party.
Even Robert Carey Jr. was benefiting from the Republican rise. Carey had been the subject of a lot of reporting in the Fall as Governor Houx had offered him the command of the Wyoming National Guard and he'd declined, and then belatedly accepted after that position had been filled (as it was, the Wyoming National Guard, like many Guard units, didn't not go to Europe as a single unit anyhow). In an era in which people publicly shamed "shirkers" that Carey was able to politically survive this decision is really remarkable. Indeed, as Carey was only forty years old in 1918, his declination is in fact somewhat inexcusable. No matter, Houx went down in the election.
And this would matter in the upcoming effort to secure a peace. Wilson had outlined his vision in his Fourteen Points. Would a GOP Congress support it? As would be seen, it wouldn't.
And that wasn't the only big election news.
Wyomingites also voted to go dry, voting two to one in favor of the Constitutional amendment to bring in Prohibition.
2. The leader of the Reichstag urged Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate, in favor of a new monarch, seeing the only alternative to be the success of a socialist revolution.
3. The American and French armies took Sedan and the surrounding territory. The French army too Rethel and Vervins. The Canadian army entered Belgium. Foch assigns the American Army to advance into Lorraine.
4. The Polish Soviet of Delegates, obviously styling themselves after the Soviets of the USSR, established the Provisional People's Government with Ignacy Daszynski as Prime Minister. As a body, it would exist only an additional week until it turned over its duties to Jozef Pilsudski, famous Polish revolutionary leader, who was newly freed from German imprisonment. On the same day, polish peasants led by Communist Tomasz Dabal took control of Tarnobrzeg Galicia and proclaimed it an independent republic.
5. The Dutch cargo ship Bernisse struck a mine and sank.
6. The Kiel rebellion begins to spread wildly to various German cities.
African American infantryman marching near Verdun, November 5, 1918.
1. The Allies inform Germany that negotiations may begin on the basis of President Wilson's Fourteen Points but that contact must be established through Marshall Foch.
2. Cpt. Marcellus H. Chiles engages in actions for which he would be awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor. His citation reads:
When his battalion, of which he had just taken command, was halted by
machinegun fire from the front and left flank, he picked up the rifle of
a dead soldier and, calling on his men to follow led the advance across
a stream, waist deep, in the face of the machinegun fire. Upon reaching
the opposite bank this gallant officer was seriously wounded in the
abdomen by a sniper, but before permitting himself to be evacuated he
made complete arrangements for turning over his command to the next
senior officer, and under the inspiration of his fearless leadership his
battalion reached its objective. Capt. Chiles died shortly after
reaching the hospital.
Chiles entered the service from Denver Colorado.
Cpt. Chiles.
3. The BEF cleared the Mormal Forest and the Canadians and British crossed the Grand Hornelle.
4. The French take Chateau Porcien.
6. The Germans commence a retreat from the Meuse to Conde but order that the American Army is to be prevented from advancing north of Verdun.
7. Enlisted sailors kill three officers and the captain of the battleship Koenig in the Baltic when they try to keep the sailors from hoisting a red flag as the sailors rebellion becomes increasing a radical Socialist one. All German ships remaining in Kiel have the red flag hoisted on them on this day.
8. The first Polish Soviet of Delegates meets to discuss establishing a Polish state.
9. The Lake Harris, an American armed merchant ship, was beached off of Lands End after a fire fight with a German submarine. On the same day the Italian sailing ship Stavnos was sunk by the UC-74.
10. Republicans win both houses of Congress by slim margins. Due to the lack of instant reporting, however, you won't see any newspapers of today's date reporting that, as that would have to wait until the next day.
New Zealanders scale the Sabre-Oise Canal wall in their last major action of World War One. NOte that in this painting at least the officer at the bottom of the stairs is carrying a German P.08 and the one at the top appears to be as well.
1. The British and French forces capture the Sambre-Oise, Le Qesnoy, and the towns of Guise and Origney en Thierache in a series of abbltes known as the Battle of Sabmre, Second Battle of Guise and the Battle of Thierache. Resistance was serious and heavy, but uneven, by the Germans and the British lost 1,150 men in the crossing of the canal. Included in the causalities was the then unknown poet Wilfred Owen, whose poetry was actually not published until many years later.
The battles, featuring English, Canadian and New Zealand troops on the British side, French troops, and a few American troops, involved 28 Allied Divisions. It was the last major battle for the Allies. Following the battle Allied forces began to advance up to five miles per day.
This does not mean, however, that fighting had halted. The Germans continued to resist, and sometimes stoutly. And in the Meuse region the river had not yet been crossed.
2. American and French forces take Stenay and Dun sure Meuse
3. The Allies occupied the Tirol in Austria pursuant to the Armistice of Villa Giusti. The Austrians further withdrew from Montenegro.
4. German reservists were deployed to Kiel to put down the sailor's rebellion but large numbers of them joined the uprising upon reaching the city. By the day's end the number of men declaring allegiance to the revolution number 40,000 and they issued fourteen demands upon the German government. The demands did not, interestingly, include the end of the monarchy, but they did demand that further defensive measures in the war not include bloodshed, which was tantamount to demanding a surrender.
5. A massive late war dogfight over the western front occurred when forty German aircraft attacked nine British Sopwith Camels of No. 65 Squadron southeast of Ghent. The British No. 204 Squadron joined the fight resulting in the loss of twenty two German aircraft.
6. The Glacian region of Komancza (Eastern Lemko) declared itself a state with the intent of uniting itself to the West Ukranian People's Republic. It would become part of Poland at the end of the Polish Ukranian War and today is part of Poland, Ukraine and Slovakia.
7. The British ship War Roach collided with a mine and had to be beached off of Port Said, Egypt.
Hugh Cairns, Canadian who posthumously won the Victoria Cross, the last VC awarded to a Canadian for action during the Great War.
1. Canadian and British troops capture Valenciennes, France, on the border with Belgium, after heavy fighting. During the fighting the heroism of Canadian Sgt. Hugh Cairns would result in his being awarded the last Victoria Cross of World War One to a Canadian soldier. His citation reads:
For most conspicuous bravery before Valenciennes on 1st November, 1918, when a machine gun opened on his platoon. Without a moment's hesitation Serjt. Cairns seized a Lewis gun
and single-handed, in the face of direct fire, rushed the post, killed
the crew of five, and captured the gun. Later, when the line was held up
by machine-gun fire, he again rushed forward, killing 12 enemy and
capturing 18 and two guns.
Subsequently, when the advance was held up by machine guns and
field guns, although wounded, he led a small party to outflank them,
killing many, forcing about 50 to surrender, and capturing all the guns.
After consolidation he went with a battle patrol to exploit Marly
and forced 60 enemy to surrender. Whilst disarming this party he was
severely wounded. Nevertheless, he opened fire and inflicted heavy
losses. Finally he was rushed by about 20 enemy and collapsed from
weakness and loss of blood.
Throughout the operation he showed the highest degree of valour, and his
leadership greatly contributed to the success of the attack. He died on
the 2nd November from wounds.
2. Allied forces in the Balkans reach Bosnia but halt as cease fire with a crumbling Astro Hungarian Empire is signed.
3. The war started yesterday between Ukrainians and Poles in the Austro Hungarian territoryof Galicia spread to Przemyśl. The fighting would go on, with occasionally cease fires, with the town going back and forth between the various sides, for ten days until the Poles prevailed and were accordingly able to send supplies to Lvov. Today the town is on the Polish Ukrainian border.
In 1918 the town had an overwhelming Polish majority population, with the second largest ethnic group being Polish Jews. Poles, Polish Jews, and Ukrainians all had formed militias to defend their parts of the city before fighting had broken out.
4. The British cargo ship Murcia was torpedoed by the German submarine UC-74 in the Mediterranean with the loss of one hand. The Germans scuttled four submarines on the same date.
5. Miss Hattie Raithel of Denver Colorado, volunteer Red Cross nurse, died of the Spanish Flu in England.
6. German sailors held an open air meeting in Kiel to air their grievances and to try to gain closure tied to German unions (many of which the working class sailors would have been close to anyhow), the Independent Social Democratic Party adn the Social Democratic Party. The result was a call for a subsequent larger mass meeting the following day.
1. On this day in 1918, General Erich Ludendorff resigned, and the direction of the war, if not already apparent, became very plain.
Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Ludendorff.
Ludendorff was the Quartermaster General of the German Army during most of World War One. The title of that position was deceptive even at the time, and has nothing to do with provisioning of soldiers as the name would seemingly imply. Rather, along with Paul von Hidenburg, he was the leader of hte German Army. His resignation was effectively a dismissal, and it expressed his falling out of favor by insisting that the German Army fight on.
During the war Ludendorff had come into immense power within not only the Army but the government as well. He rose to prominence starting with the assault on Liege where, while he was an observer, he ended up in command when the senior German officer was killed. Thereafter, he was assigned to the East, together with Paul Von Hindenburg, who was an elderly officer called back into service from retirement. The two of them worked closely together although Hindenburg proved to have the more solid tactical mind.
While in the East Ludendorff began to display traits that would later play out during World War One to the German's ultimate detriment. During the 1915-16 winter he headquartered in the Baltics and operated to start colonizing the conquered area with German settlers with the aim of Germanizing it, given the East a taste of what German policy was to be in 1939-1945. He anticipated the expulsion of Slavic populations in some of the conquered territory the Germans were advancing into and envisioned a future war against the United Kingdom and United States. In short, his vision of Germany in the East very matched the one that was to be attempted some twenty five years later.
Following setbacks in 1916, Ludendorff was elevated to higher command and became Quartermaster General in the thought that the existing Army leadership was failing. His first acts concerned the Romanian entry into the war, but his leadership may have been relatively inconsequential in dealing with that, or at least the local commander, August von Mackensen felt that they were. During the same period Hindeburg was elevated to commander of the German Army overall, but he was subordinate to Ludendorff. By 1916-17, his military role combined with his administrative role, given that the German government was subordinate to the civil service and the Army, such that he weilded immence power and was widely seen as a near dictator.
In 1917 Ludendorff was complicit in the German navy's desire to resume unrestricted submarine warfare in spite of the clear knowledge that it would bring the United States into the war. He was brash and powerful enough to walk out of a meeting in which Kaiser Wilhelm II required his commanders to consider the views of German chemist Walther Nernst who was regarded by the Kaiser as an expert on the United States and opposed the move. He was one of the German generals who opposed the German Reichstag when it passed a resolution for peace without annexations in the Spring of 1917.
Ludendorff was directly complicit in Germany's 1918 failures as he was one of the German figures who insisted on forcing huge territorial concession on Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which resulted in the necessity of Germany keeping 1,000,000 troops in the East, some of them engaged in wars that followed the Russian surrender, when they were clearly immediately needed in the West, something that should have been plain to all.
Ludendorff collapsed mentally when German fortunes turned in the summer of 1918. As a result he temporarily stepped away from his office but returned after a month's rest. On September 29, 1918, he had come to the realization that the war was lost and he and Hindenburg told the Kaiser that he must accept an Armistice with the Allies. The new chancellor approached President Wilson with a diplomatic note but the resulting terms were unacceptable to the German leadership at first as they required that Germany become a democratic state, thereby essentially demanding the complete capitulation of the German government and the formation of a new one prior to the commencement of negotiations.
This prompted Ludendorff and Hindenburg to send a telegram to German commanders that the fighting must continue. While the German rank and file troops had not cracked, this was simply too much to expect of the German people and their army and when the contents of the telegram were leaked to the press, it caused a domestic uproar in Germany.
Prince Maximilian of Baden, the chancellor, soon approached the Kaiser and indicated that if Lundendorff was not removed he and his cabinet would resign. He and Hindenburg were called in and both offered to resign. Hindenburg's resignation was refused but Ludendorff's was accepted. Ludendorff immediately snubbed Hindenburg by refusing to ride back to headquarters with him, claiming later Hindenburg had always treated him "shabbily".
He'd go on, of course, to be figure in far right wing movements in post war Germany and a co-conspirator with Hitler. Indeed, he was a significant right wing figure whose views anticipated the Nazis in some ways before their rise, and even had back into World War One. In 1920 he was part of the Kapp Putsch that attempted to overthrow the government. He was later part of the Beer Hall Putsch attempted by Hitler in 1923 and was amazingly acquitted in a trial in 1924, a sign of how weak the German republican government really was. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1924 as well a part of a coalition of far right political movements that included the Nazis.
By that time he was descending into what we'd now recognize as a slow onset of dementia and his behavior became increasingly erratic. He divorced his wife Margarethe, whom he had married in 1910 at age 45. Showing the degree to which the Army was the exception to the rule, she divorced her first husband to marry him in an age in which divorce was disapproved of, and both families approved (she was the daughter of wealthy industrialist). As he descended into madness he married Mathilde von Kemnitz who held radical religious views and he became a pagan and started worshiping Woton. In this period he came to a radical hatred of Jews and Catholics. He came to hold Hitler and Hindenburg in contempt and he refused a surprise personal attempt to promote him to Field Marshall in 1935. He died in 1937.
2. Americans take Gradnpre
3. Canadian Thanksgiving was held in Denain.
4. William George Barker, Victoria Cross
5. The HMT Calceolaria struck a mine and sunk, as did the Cuban cargo ship Chaparra. The German U-boat U-78 was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS G2 in the Skagerrak, going down with all 40 hands.
1. There were no shipping losses at all on this day, which is remarkable in and of itself.
2. The British reached the Schelt River in Belgium.
3. The British also reached Khan al-Sahbil, Syria. This was the first time in the Pursuit to Haritan in which the British made visual contact with the Otttoman's once again.
Myrtle Gonzalez.
4. Myrtle Gonzalez, the American movie industries first Hispanic movie star, died of the Spanish Influenza at age 27 at her parents home in Los Angeles. She had acted in 78 films. In spite of her young age, she was retired at the time having married actor and direct Allen Watt the year prior. It was her second marriage Watt had been commissioned in the Army and the couple lived for a time at Ft. Lewis, Washington, but her frail health due to a heart ailment demanded her return to Los Angeles and Watt was released from the service to care for her. She left a son, age seven, from her first marriage.
American troops getting newspapers from the back of an American Red Cross truck.
1. The British occupied Roubaix and Tourcoing.
2. The U.S. 96th Division came into being, showing how the Army had grown and was continuing to grow. It never left the states.
3. The British schooner Emily Millington was sunk by a surfaced submarine without loss of life. The British mointor HMS M21 hit a mine and sank in the English channel.
1. The Allies captured Bruges, Courtrai, and Zeebrugge, Belgium. In the process, 12,000 Germans surrendered. The Belgian Army engaged in the last cavalry charge of World War One when the Guides Regiment successfully charged at the Burkel Forest.
2. The Portuguese sailing ship Aida sunk by a German U-boat. The British ships Almerian and the HMS Plumpton struck mines, sinking the Almerian and damaging the Plumpton. The German submarine UB-123 also hit a mine in the North Sea and went down with all hands.
3. The West Ukrainian People's Republic was established in the Ukrainian provinces of the Austro Hungarian Empire.
4. A flu hospital was established in Casper.
5. Old allegiances of all types were seemingly being modified everywhere. Icelanders voted overwhelmingly for becoming a separate kingdom with the Danish king as their sovereign.
British troops entering Lille, Belgium. A photo strongly recalling similar photographs from World War Two.
1. The British entered Lille, Belgium and the Allies otherwise took Thourout, Ostend and Douai.
2. Czechoslovakia declared independence.
3. The Reds executed approximately 100 Imperial Russian officers in Pyatigorsk.
4. The British cargo ships Hunsdon and RFA Industry were sunk in the Irish sea by German submarines. The Icelandic trawler Njordur was sunk by a submarine in the Atlantic. The French battleship Voltaire was hit by a torpedo fired by a German submarine but was only damaged. The Austro Hungarian passenger ship Linz hit a mine and sunk with large loss of life.
The British submarine HMS E3 was sunk in the North Sea by a German submarine. The submarine, which had been attempting to maneuver against German surface ships when spotted by the German submarine, put off survivors but the U-boat did not pick them up at first fearing a second British submarine. When it returned, they had all been lost.
2. The HMS Cymric, a Q-ship, mistook the submarine HMS J6 as a U-boat and shelled it, killing fifteen of the J6's crew.
On the same day the French sailing vessel Bretagagne and the Greek vessels Evangelistria, Georgios and Maria, were sunk. The British coastal motor boat HM CMB-71A was lost.
Camp Funston, Kansas, which some believe if the locus of the origin of the Spanish Flu.
1. The Battle of Courtrai commences in which the Groupe d'Armees des Flanders, made up of twelve Belgian, ten British and six French divisions under the command of King Albert I of Belgian attacked German forces in the hopes of continuing the Allied advance as far as possible before the oncoming winter made further advances impossible. It was still anticiapted at the time that the war would drag into 1919.
British forces found, to their expectation, that the Germans offered much reduced resistance and they had achived all of their objectives, reaching the Scheldt, by the 22nd.
The Germans were basically collapsing while still offering resistance. The nearness to a complete German disaster was not apparent, but it was coming.
2. The U.S. resumes the offensive in the Meuse Argonne with assaults near Montfaucon.
Senencourt (Muese) France. "Kamerad," a figure by the soldiers in the yard of the American Red Cross Canteen at Senencourt. The Red Cross girls are, from left to right: Miss Louise Adams of 10 Arlington Place, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Miss Alice Birdall, of 310 Third Ave. Reselle Ave., N.J.; and Miss Gertrude Nichols, #849 West Galen Street, Butte, Montana; Capt. Beverly Rautoul of #17 Winter Street, Salem, Mass., and Private Geo. St. Clair Preston, both of the American Red Cross Evacuation Hospital #8, are on the extreme left
3. The air wing of the United States Marine Corps engaged in its first all Marine air action by bombing Pitthem, Belgium. Marines Ralph Talbot and gunner Robert Guy Robinson won the Medal of Honor for heroism associated with holding off German air attacks on their Airco bomber when they became separated and had to return to attempt to return to their base alone.
Airco DH4, which was used in the tactical role.
4. The provisional government for Czechoslovakia formed.
5. The U-139 attacked the Portoguese steamer Sao Miguel and its escort the Portuguese Navy trawler NRP Augusto de Castilho on the Action of 14 October 1918. The trawler was lightly armed and while it fought for several hours, it was actually outgunned by the submarine and surrendered to it, and was thereafter scuttled by the German submariners. The engagement is regarded as the only high seas naval battle of the Great War to take place in the North Atlantic.
On the same day, German submarines sank the Bayard, a French fishing vessel, the Stifinder, a Norwegian barque, which was scuttled due an engagement with the U-152 and the British passenger ship Dundalk, with the loss of 21 lives. The German minsweeper SMS M22 was sunk by mines.
Private Thomas M. Holmes of the 82nd Division, East Aurora New York, receives chocolate from Lt. Burgess of the American Red Cross Field Hospital No. 328. October 9, 1918.
1. Cambrai Falls to Allies.
2. The Lost Battalion rescued.
3. UW closes its doors due to the flu.
4. Landgrave Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse took a late war job opportunity to become the elected King of Finland. He'd occupy that role, designed to cement Finland to Imperial Germany, only until December 14 when the position ended in light of the end of Imperial Germany. He never actually made it to Finland while he was King.
1. On this day in 1918 Sgt. Alvin York preformed the deeds that would make him a household name in the United States and the most famous American veteran of WWI other than, perhaps, Gen. Pershing.
York was a from the Tennessee hill country and one of eleven children of a very poor family. With virtually no education at all, he had been supporting his family for some time because of his father's early death. A devout Evangelical Christian, York was a reformed drinker and fighter who had grown up in a family that depended upon hunting to put food on the table. He was an extremely skilled woodsman and marksman at the time he reluctantly entered the Army due to conscription. He was also seeking conscientious objector status at that time, but reconsidered his position due to the urging of his military superiors. He proved to be a good soldier and was assigned to the 82nd Division, seeing combat first in the St. Mihel Offensive.
On October 8 his battalion was assigned to capture Hill 223 north of Chatel-Chéhéry, France. During the battle Corporal York took on machinegun positions while the remainder of his party guarded captured prisoners. York took those positions on first with his rifle, a M1917 Enfield, and then ended up killing six charging Germans with his M1911 pistol after his rifle was empty. Ultimately a large party of Germans surrendered to York and York and seven other enlisted men marched to the rear with 132 German prisoners. During the battle York killed 25 Germans. His Medal of Honor citation reads:
After his platoon suffered heavy
casualties and 3 other noncommissioned officers had become casualties,
Cpl. York assumed command. Fearlessly leading seven men, he charged with
great daring a machine gun nest which was pouring deadly and incessant
fire upon his platoon. In this heroic feat the machine gun nest was
taken, together with 4 officers and 128 men and several guns.
York would go on to be promoted to the rank of Sergeant before the war was over and he became the most decorated American soldier of World War One. He was commissioned in the Signal Corps during World War Two and obtained the rank of Major, but his health had declined severely and he was used in a moral boosting role. In spite of ill health he would remain in the Tennessee National Guard until 1951, retiring at the rank of Colonel. He was famously the subject of a movie in which Gary Cooper portrayed him.
As noted, York was undoubtedly the most famous enlisted man of World War One, and he was truly heroic. It's worth noting however that his accomplishments weren't entirely unique and there were several other instances of single American servicemen taking large numbers of prisoners under heroic circumstances, one of which we read about here just the other day. In some ways the difference with York was that he was of very humble origin and not a career soldier, where as the actions by soldiers like Michael B. Ellis, whom we read about the other day, were accomplishments of men from the Regular Army. These stories have a common aspect to them, however, in that they were undertaken by men who had extraordinary combat skill nearly singlehandedly, which was admirable but which also tends to show that the American Army was so green at the time that it proved to be necessary for extremely heroic men to undertake actions that were nearly suicidal in order to address the combat situation with which they were faced, rather than relying on coordinated unit actions. In York's case, a lifetime in the woods had prepared him for battle in a unique way.
2. On the same day that York's action earned the Medal of Honor, the same could be said of James Dozier.
Dozier started his military career in the South Carolina National Guard and had served on the Mexican boarder with that unit. When it was called into service for World War One he was commissioned an officer and was a 1st Lieutenant on this day when he took over his company when its commander was wounded, even though he also was. He commanded the unit over the next several hours, personally rushing one machinegun pit with the aid of a lieutenant. The men under his command took 470 prisoners.
He stayed in the South Carolina National Guard becoming its AG in the 1920s and retired in 1959 as a Lieutenant General.
3. On this day in 1918 British Empire forces launched a massive assault on the Germans near Cambrai. In two days they captured the towns but the over matched Germans nonetheless slowed the advance to the point where it needed to be halted.
That says something about the tenacity of the Germans even at this late stage of the war. The Germans had 180,000 men committed to the defense in this battle. The British Empire forces numbered 630,000. The British assault was a success, but the Germans none the less managed to require the British advance to halt.
Canadian troops on the Cambrai road, 1918.
4. Pvt. Abraham Krotoshinsky made his way through enemy lines to inform the American Army of the situation concerning the "Lost Battalion". He would lead troops back to the besieged soldiers.
Pvt. Krotoshinsky was a Polish Jew who had emigrated to the United States in 1912 to avoid service in the Imperial Russian Army. Following World War One he emigrated to Palestine but failed as a farmer and returned to the United States. Like Michael Ellis, discussed the other day, he was rescued from unemployment by President Coolige who ordered that he be provided with a job in the United States Postal Service.
5. The Desert Mounted Corps entered Beirut where they took 600 Ottoman troops without resistance.
6. Laramie and Casper closed public meeting places of all types:
5. Sgt. Michaal B. Ellis undertakes actions that result in his being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
74, W.D., 1919. Citation: During the entire day’s engagement he operated far in advance of the first wave of his company, voluntarily undertaking most dangerous missions and single-handedly attacking and reducing machinegun nests. Flanking one emplacement, he killed 2 of the enemy with rifle fire and captured 17 others. Later he single-handedly advanced under heavy fire and captured 27 prisoners, including 2 officers and 6 machineguns, which had been holding up the advance of the company. The captured officers indicated the locations of 4 other machineguns, and he in turn captured these, together with their crews, at all times showing marked heroism and fearlessness.
As the war raged in Europe, while peace feelers started to be sent out, the Spanish Flu claimed its first victim in Casper.
And Home Guard service proved lethal for Pvt. O. B. Duncan, who fell from a train and was run over it by it. Why Pvt. Duncan was riding on the train isn't clear, but at least as late as World War Two the Home Guard did guard the rail yards for a time in Casper, so presumably something similar was occurring.
Oddly, Thermopolis was a setting for both tragedies.
1. President Wilson receives the diplomatic note composed by the newly installed Chancellor Prince Maximilian of Baden proposing peace based upon Wilson's Fourteen Points.
