The Last Battle of the First World War
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
November 11, 1918. At exactly 11 AM local time, the shooting stops. It’s eerily quiet for the first time in a long time. World War I has finally come to an end today after Germany and the Allied nations signed an armistice not long before. The final battle of the war, known today as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, saw an unexpected turn of events and a surprising victory. Today: the battle that ended the first world war. How did an inexperienced American army help turn the tides? And how did the Meuse-Argonne Offensive change the way America would fight future wars?
Thank you to our guest, Professor Mitchel Yockelson, author of “Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing's Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I.”
Primary source letter from army doctor Stanhope Bayne-Jones can be found on the website of the Historical Collections of the US National Library of Medicine.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:05.6 | History this week, November 11, 1918. |
| 0:11.8 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:15.4 | Dear Marion, the letter begins. |
| 0:18.9 | It's from a soldier to his sister on the last day of the Great War. |
| 0:24.6 | He writes, |
| 0:26.0 | the armistice began at 11 o'clock this morning. |
| 0:29.0 | We knew the time of the day by the sudden silence. |
| 0:36.0 | Suddenly all the guns behind us stopped barking and rolling. |
| 0:40.0 | The last freight car rattled over our heads. |
| 0:42.6 | And all the machine guns suddenly stopped, |
| 0:45.4 | though they had been riding away up to the very last minute. |
| 0:48.8 | There was a cold, dense mist, |
| 0:52.0 | in which I suddenly noticed that I could hear water, |
| 0:55.0 | dripping off a bush next to me. |
| 1:01.6 | World War I is officially over. |
| 1:06.0 | But to many soldiers on the front lines, |
| 1:08.0 | the silence feels uncertain, |
| 1:10.0 | like the shells might begin again any minute. |
| 1:14.0 | These men have endured weeks or months or years |
| 1:18.0 | of horrific fighting and carnage. |
| 1:21.0 | This war brought new weapons, |
... |
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