Henry Gunther was killed at 10:59 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, the last fatality of World War I. The former bank clerk from Baltimore was charging a German machine-gun emplacement in eastern France, possibly because he wanted to redeem himself after being reduced in rank from sergeant to private.

There had been heavy fighting throughout that morning, especially around the Belgian town of Mons, a strategic coalmining center liberated in the closing hours of the war by Canadian troops at a cost of 280 casualties. The last of them was Pvt. George Price, who died from a bullet in the chest at 10:58 a.m., two minutes before the Armistice came into effect.