World War I: The courage and folly of the tussle that left indelible scars

During World War I, millions died, empires crumbled, nations were formed and maps were redrawn in ways that reverberate mightily a century later

Seconds before an armistice formally ended World War I on November 11, 1918, Pvt Henry Nicholas Gunther, an American soldier from Baltimore, mounted a final, one-man charge against a German machine-gun nest in northeastern France.

The German gunners, The Baltimore Sun reported many years later, had tried to wave him away, but he ran on, only to perish in a burst of heavy automatic fire — the last soldier of any nationality to die in the conflict — at 10.59 am local time. One minute later, under the terms of an armistice signed about six hours earlier, the so-called Great