'I Am Sure They Had a Slight Effect'

“I am still holding down a place in a quiet sector and I’m getting fat on it. Also that helmet is not going to make me baldheaded, at least I don’t think so.”

Had Mark Twain not died in 1910, and had he served in the Great War that started four years later, and that the United States entered in 1917, he might have written these cocky, oh-so-American sentiments on the eve of Armistice Day. Instead, his fellow Missourian, Harry Truman, wrote them to his wife on Nov. 10, 1918, “somewhere in France.” As the only future U.S. president to see combat in World War I, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Truman writes breezily to Bess:

“The Hun is yelling for peace like a stuck hog, and I hope old daddy Foch makes him yell louder yet or throttles him one. Throttling would be too easy. When you see some of the things those birds did and then hear them put up the talk they do for peace it doesn't impress you at all. A complete and thorough thrashing is all they’ve got coming and take my word they are getting it and getting it right.”

On Nov. 4, unknown to Truman, representatives of the Allied nations had met in Paris to prepare for the war’s conclusion and to settle the terms of Germany’s surrender. The conditions, intended to restore the frontiers violated by the Germans and prevent them from waging future war, were presented to the German government on Nov. 5. Its allies Turkey and Austria-Hungary had already signed, their armies were in retreat, and civil unrest raged at home. On the night of Nov. 6-7, the German command said it wished to discuss the terms of the proposed Armistice and asked where the formal meeting could take place. The Germans met the Allies at Compiègne, north of Paris, negotiated, and awaited approval from Berlin. Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on Nov. 9.

One-hundred years ago, on November 11, 1918, at 5:10 a.m. in a railway car at Compiègne, the Germans signed the Armistice, which would become effective that morning at 11 a.m. Paris time -- the eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month. Fighting continued along the Western Front until 11. The opposing armies suffered more than 2,000 casualties that day. Artillery barrages erupted as 11 a.m. approached, with soldiers hoping to take credit for firing the war’s final shot. On Nov. 11, Truman writes again to his fiancée:

“I just got official notice that hostilities would cease at eleven o’clock. Every one is about to have a fit. I fired 164 rounds at him before he quit this morning anyway. It seems that everyone was just about to blow up wondering if Heinie would come in. I knew that Germany could not stand the gaff. For all their preparedness and swashbuckling talk they cannot stand adversity. France was whipped for four years and never gave up and one good licking suffices for Germany. What pleases me most is the fact that I was lucky enough to take a Battery through the last drive. The Battery has shot something over ten thousand rounds at the Hun and I am sure they had a slight effect.”