LAST MAN KILLED

I want to tell you a heck of a story. As the autumn sun ineffectually rose above the eastern horizon, Private First Class Arthur Goodmurphy peered suspiciously across the Canal du Centre (above), which split the tiny Belgium village of Ville-sur-Haine.

At the tender age of twenty-one, Arthur was already a veteran. He’d been part of the slaughter on the Somme in 1916, and a witness to the horror of Passchendaele (above)  in 1917. And now, as the winter of 1918 waited just over the horizon, Arthur could sense that the war was almost over. The Germans were almost done for. But it had been a damn near thing.

In the last three months the Canadian Corps had driven the German army out of the trenches, those symbols of slaughter and misery, and left them far behind; along with their protective dugouts and tunnels.

The last month of the war, fought above ground, in the open, had seen the worst butchery so far in a war renowned for butchery. What kept Arthur Goodmurphy and his fellow Canadians fighting despite the lengthening causality lists was that they were finally winning. God only knew what kept the Germans fighting.

Just at dawn the Canadian troops had fought their way into the Belgium town of Mons, where the British army had begun the war four long bloody years before. Arthur had been ordered to take four men and advance and see if the Huns were going to make stand to defend the canal. 

With his first sight of the footbridge over the canal, Arthur worried if it was mined. Was German artillery zeroed in to cut his battalion down as they crossed the bridge? Or had the Germans just kept running this time? 

Arthur felt a long way from the open prairies of his native Saskatchewan. But he knew the way home lay across that canal. A few minutes after 10:30 am, Arthur stood up, and said in his round Canadian accent to the young man beside him, “Come on, George.  Let’s have a look.” As one, three men stood up with Arthur, and all four began running toward the waterway.

As they took their first steps in the open the patrol spotted a German machine gun crew setting up in the attic of a house on the far shore. Experienced soldiers, the Canadians knew they had to cross the open ground before the deadly weapon could begin shooting. They dashed the hundred yards across the bridge, their hobnail boots pounding on the boards.

On the other side they ran up the narrow street, up to the door of the first brick house. Without pausing, young Private George Price kicked the door in, and the others followed him. Inside they found Monsieur Stievenart and his son, six year old Omer. Monsieur Stievenart explained that the Germans had just left by the back door. Immediately the four privates moved on to the next house, where they crashed in on an elderly couple, the Lenoirs.  Again they were told the Germans had just run out the back door. But now they could also hear a German machine gun firing somewhere in the village, and bullets chipping off the outside walls of the building they were in.

Arthur realized this meant the patrol had accomplished its goal. With no artillery fire falling, it had to mean the Germans were not going to put up more than a modest defence of the Central Canal.  Now the patrol had to get that information back to headquarters. Time to go back. George Price led the way out the door, and Arthur followed. As they stepped into the street the machine gun fire suddenly stopped. And in that second of silence George turned as if to say something to Arthur. And a single sniper's shot rang out. 

George fell forward, into Arthur’s arms. A growing crimson  red stain quickly spread across George’s chest. The squad struggled to pull their comrade back inside the house. From somewhere a Belgium nurse appeared and began to tend to George. But it was to no effect. 

Private George Lawrence Price -  born on 15 December 1892 in the village of Falmouth, Nova Scotia,  inducted 15 October, 1917 in Moose Jaw,  Saskatchewan, and served in Company "A", 

Saskatchewan North West Regiment, 28th Battalion, 6th Infantry Division, Canadian Expeditionary Force -  died a few moments later at 25 years of age, on the floor of small house on the east bank of the Central Canal in the village of Ville-sur-Haine, central Belgium.  The elderly Lenoirs provided a blanket, which the three remaining Canadians used to carry their fallen comrade back across the canal. Strangely they had to dodge no fire on their ran back across the footbridge.

As they reached the western shore, Private Arthur Goodmurphy  was surprised to be met by Captain Ross, who informed the four men that the firing had stopped because the war had just ended; on the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, of 1918. That made George Price the last man killed in World War One.

It is a great story, and partly true. With his open and innocent face, George Lawrence Price, serial number 256265, was a perfect example of the absent of logic in the 67,000 Canadian sacrifices consumed by this war.  He was officially listed as being killed by a sniper’s bullet at 10:57 A.M., just three minutes before the cease fire was to take effect.

The last of the 1,737,000 Frenchman to die in this war was forty year old  Private First Class Augustin-Joseph Vitorin Trebuchon, who was carrying word of the armistice to the front lines when he was gunned down just across the Meuse River in the Ardennes forest, at about  10:45 A.M.

The last English soldier to die in World War One was Private George Edwin Ellison. He had been born in Leeds, England, 40 years before he was killed outside of Mons Belgium,  at 9:30 that morning of 11 November, 1918. 

The last of the 117,000 Americans killed in World War One was 23 year old Private Henry Nicolas John Gunther of A Company, "Baltimore's Own" 313th Regiment, 157th Brigade, 79th Infantry Division.  He had been a Sergeant, but the death and bloody senselessness of war had embittered him, and Henry was demoted back to private after a letter home advising friends to avoid the draft, was intercepted by army censors. At 10:59 am Private Henry Gunter, a German American, had charged a German machine gun in the outskirts of the town of Ville-Devant-Chaumont in the Meuse Argonne region of France.  And if accurate, that timing would have made him the last man to officially die in World War One.

Of course none of the grieving families were told at the time their loved one had been the last to die. That would have held them up as an example of the futility and waste of the war. Instead most were told the deaths had occurred the day before, on 10 November.

However, there is also the story of German Lieutenant H.G. Toma, who, after the cease fire, had disarmed his men and was leading them across the lines to surrender, when they were gunned down by American machine gunners who had not yet gotten the order to cease fire, or who just wanted to murder some more Germans.  Lt. Toma was so despondent and incensed at the  slaughter of his men that he shot himself.  His suicide would seem to have been a poignant comment on the entire war.   Toma’s death was also said to be the inspiration for the final scene for the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front”.

From the cynics view the very idea of a “Last Man” killed in a war that killed 10 million soldiers (and another 10 million civilians) may seem an exercise in romantic futility. In fact, the last day of this war, which lasted just 11 hours, saw almost 11,000 dead - more dead than in the 24 hours of D-Day, the allied invasion of France, in World War Two. 

Worse, as an historian has noted, “The men storming the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944, were risking their lives to win a war. The men who fell on 11 November, 1918, lost their lives in a war that the Allies had already won. Had Marshal Foch (the Allied Supreme Commander) heeded the appeal…to stop hostilities while the talks went on, some sixty-six hundred lives would likely have been saved… So,...the men who died for nothing when they might have known long life, ‘would all be forgotten.”

Well, not entirely. We all die eventually, and we are all eventually forgotten, as our bones and reputations turn to dust. But the death of twenty million should mean something greater than the sum of their individual lives. And in that regard those millions who died in the “…war to end all wars”, require our respect, and an image to keep their memory alive. 

And in that regard the face of George Lawrence Price (above) , staring out from the now distant past, does better than many.  His is the face of confident innocence: a confident time, familiar and yet distant, innocent, and yet no more innocent than your life today; George Lawrence Price who was, officially, the last Canadian killed in The Great War of 1914-1918. May God rest his soul.

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ZEPPELIN Last Flight of The L-31

I would like to have been there when they walked the monster out of its shed on the first day of October, 1916. I would like to have asked the people shepherding the behemoth from its cage and those watching if any of them really thought this idea could have ever worked.

Each of the “Air Ships” that left their sheds on that Sunday afternoon were floating contradictions. Almost ten city blocks long and more than 200 feet in diameter, and weighing 32 tons, they bobbed effortlessly, suspended four feet above the ground, steered by gentle tugs on their guide ropes from the 100 plus ground crewmen who walked each monster out as if it were a well trained dog. For all of 1915 the Zeppelins had invaded England with impunity, undetected on moonless nights, untouchable even when in full view, unreachable at 10,000 feet above the ground.

The new “Super Zeppelin”, L-31, was the lead ship in this eleven ship mission. It had been commissioned just 3 months earlier. It carried 5 tons of bombs and a crew of 20. It’s six, 240 horsepower Maybach engines propelled the giant through the thin air above 15, 000 feet at over 60 miles an hour.

But like all of her comrades, old and new, within the aluminum ribs and buttresses of the L-31 were confined great bags of buoyant explosive hydrogen gas. These ‘ships of war’ sailed into battle separated from an instant inferno by only a casual spark.

At  33 years of age, Captain-lieutenant Henruch Mathy, commander of the L-31, was at the peak of his profession. He had been picked for Zeppelin command straight out of the Naval Academy.

This was his 15th combat mission and Mathy (above left) was personally responsible for more than two/thirds of all the damage the Zeppelins had done over Britain in this war. On one raid alone, on 8 September, 1915, Mathy’s bombs had killed 22 Londoners and caused a million and a half pounds of damage. It was an achievement that earned him in England the infamous title of “Zeppelin Scourge”.

Newspaper readers in Germany were thrilled at his accounts of action over London. “A sudden flash and a narrow band of brilliant light reached out from below; then a second, third, fourth and fifth, and soon more than a score of crisscrossing ribbons ascended. From the Zeppelin it looked as if the city had come to life and was waving its arms about the sky, reaching out feelers for the danger that threatened it, but our deeper impression was that they were tentacles seeking to drag us to our destruction…

"When the first searchlights pick you up, and you see the first flashes of the guns below, your nerves get a little shock, but then you steady down and put your mind on it, what you are there for….When we are above the Bank of England, I shouted through the speaking tube…”Fire slowly!”…I soon observed flames bursting forth in several places.

"I tried to hit London Bridge and believe I was successful, - to what extent in damage I could not determine…Having dropped all bombs, I made a dash for home. We had not been hit.”  In fact neither the bridge nor the Bank of London were ever hit by Zeppelin bombs.

But on 2 September, 1916, a British fighter plane using new incendiary ammunition brought down the German Army Zeppelin SL-11 over London. And from that moment every Zeppelin  used in combat was doomed.

In 1916 Henry Tuttle was just ten years old, but as an adult he remembered the reaction of the citizens of London when one of the tormenting giants was finally brought down. “It was a fantastic sight, like a big silver cigar, and it seemed to be going very slowly by this time. A lot of people came out of their houses and then all of a sudden flames started to come from the Zeppelin and then it broke in half and was one mass of flames."

"It was an incredible sight: people were cheering, dancing, singing and somebody started playing the bagpipes. This went on well into the night.”

The view was different on the German side of the lines, of course. Pitt Klein, an engineer aboard the L-31 wrote, “...you know that I'm no coward… But I dream constantly of falling zeppelins. There is something in me that I can't describe. It's as if I saw a strange darkness before me, into which I must go."

Even the commander of the L-31, Henruch Mathy had admitted to his wife, “If anyone should say that he was not haunted by visions of burning airships, then he would be a braggart.”

As darkness fell on Sunday 1 October, 1916, eleven German airships struggled through a cold rain to cross the English Channel. Some were forced to return when too much ice formed on their canvas hides. And some were blown off course.

But by 8:00 PM the L-31 was  alone, approaching London from the northwest. Gliding silently, using his engines only when needed to maintain headway, Mathy tired to creep onto his target.

Then, at about 11:45 PM, the L-31 broke through clouds over the Thames and was immediately caught in the shafts of a handful of searchlights. Desperate to quickly escape, Mathy dropped most of his bomb load at random and struggled to seek the safety of the high clouds.

An American reporter was there below, and described the scene. “Among the autumn stars floats a long gaunt zeppelin. It is dull yellow – the color of the harvest moon. The long fingers of searchlights, reaching up from the roofs of the city, are touching all sides of the death messenger with their white tips. Great booming sounds shake the city. They are zeppelin bombs – falling – killing – burning. Lesser noises - of shooting – are nearer at hand, the noise of areal guns sending shrapnel into the sky.

"A streak of fire was shooting straight down at me, it seemed, and I stared at it hardly comprehending. The bomb struck the coping of a restaurant a few yards away, then fell into London Wall and lay burning in the roadway. I looked up and at the last moment the searchlight caught the ‘zepp’ full and clear. It was a beautiful but terrifying sight.”

In the Chestnut neighborhood of London, the windows of 300 homes were shattered by the German high explosives, but only one woman was injured. High above, Mathy tried to turn his massive ship back to the west. As he did a single tiny British fighter pulled up unseen behind the L-31 and fired one long burst of tracer and incendiary rounds.

The Canadian pilot, Wulstan Tempest, saw the huge ship begin to glow from within like “a giant Chinese-lantern”.

Two million cubic feet of hydrogen sucked in the oxygen. The flames broiled through the canvas skin, and quickly consumed the vessel. The monster began fall apart and to plummet.

Also underneath the Zeppelin was British reporter Michael MacDonagh. He wrote later that night, “I saw high in the sky a concentrated blaze of searchlights, and in its centre, a ruddy glow, which rapidly spread into the outline of a blazing airship. Then the searchlights were turned off and the Zeppelin drifted perpendicularly in the darkened sky, a gigantic pyramid of flames, red and orange, like a ruined star falling slowly to earth. 

"Its glare lit up the streets and gave a ruddy tint, even to the waters of the Thames. The spectacle lasted two or three minutes. It was so horribly fascinating that I felt spellbound - almost suffocated with emotion, ready hysterically to laugh or cry. When, at last, the doomed airship vanished from sight, there arose a shout the like of which I never heard in London before - a swelling shout, that appeared to be rising from all parts of the metropolis, ever increasing in force and intensity.”

Just at midnight, now 2 October 1916, the great dying ship crumpled into a ball of brilliant light.

The doomed craft crossed Cotton Road (above) in the village of Potters Bar at 30 feet, and a final guest of wind carried the ship into the open space of Oakmere Park (below).

An explosion threw the gondola from the ship and the frame broke in two. The skeletal bow smashed onto a 700 year old 120 foot high English Oak tree. A bobby, rushing to scene of the crash, had to dodge a spinning propeller.

The aluminum frame bent and screamed on impact, and collapsed and melted in the white hot flames. The diesel fuel and ammunition exploded. The crew either burned alive before impact, or jumped into the darkness to their deaths,

Henruch Mathy jumped to his death. He blazing corpse singed its impression behind in the wet grass and soft soil of England.

Seventy miles to the south, over Norfolk, the crew of the L-21 saw their fellow zeppelin caught in the searchlights and falling to earth in flames. They would report back to Germany that another mighty zeppelin had fallen to English innovation.

At first light a “thick clammy mist” shielded Potters Bar, and the young reporter, Michael MacDonagh, stepped into the barn just beyond the still smoldering “Zeppelin Oak”.

Inside he found a row of blanketed bodies. He stooped and lifted the edge of the first and found himself staring into the blank face of a clean shaved  badly scarred man, wearing a thick muffler. MacDonagh recognized the face instantly from German propaganda photos, Henruch Mathy.

It is hard not to think that Mathy's life, and the lives of his crew, were wasted by the German leadership. There were 115 Zeppelins which flew 150 raids over England during World War One. Each of those ships cost over one hundred thousand pounds apiece - about $300,000.

Seventy-seven of those ships were destroyed either by the Allies or in accidents. The crews suffered a 40 % casualty rate. All told the raids killed 557 civilians (no soldiers or sailors). The cost of building those seventy-seven ships was five times the damaged the Zeppelin raids had inflicted upon the British.

The idea of using zeppelins filled with explosive hydrogen gas as weapons was insane, and had more to do with the investment of egos than in practicalities. But in every war you find such insanity. It is business as usual. It is war.

In 1926 Frau Mathy quietly visited her husband’s grave in Potters Bar. She came back in 1976, shortly before her own death. And I find myself wondering what she felt about her husband's sacrifice. She left behind no diary or writing to explain how she dealt with her grief over the those  50 years. Did she think defending Imperial Germany was worth all those lost years together? Or the lives of those his bombs killed?  And what do we tell the soldiers who sacrifice for their nation, today?

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