A celebration of
Armistice Day, Nov. 11,
1918, on the Grand
Boulevard in Paris,
France. Edward Hardin
carved many of the names
of the battles in which he
fought into his smoking
pipe. They include: Ypres,
Mt Kemmel, Cambrai-
St. Quentin, Bellicourt,
Busigny, Nauroy,
St. Souplet, Premont,
La Haie Menneresse
and Bohain.
41
NOV. 1, 1918
From a letter to his father from a convalescent hospital at Trouville, France.
“I suppose Turkey’s surrender and Austria’s capitulation and request for an
armistice were received with wild joy in the States. It certainly looked good
to us over here, and it’s bound to be the beginning of the end for I can’t see
how Germany can last much longer at the rate we have been driving them
recently, and the enormous numbers of prisoners, guns, ammunition, etc. we
have captured. They can’t last much longer. Why, on this front alone, the
past three months we have captured 172,659 prisoners, 2,378 pieces of ar-tillery,
17,000 machine guns and over 2,750 trench mortars, also enormous
quantities of ammunition stores, supplies etc. Gosh! won’t it be great when
old Kaiser Bill does finally discover that he is licked good and plenty and
“throws up the sponge.”
EDWARD returned to duty three days prior to the signing of
AP/U.S. ARMY SIGNAL CORPS
the Armistice, the Nov. 11, 1918 cessation of hostilities on the
Western Front. The Treaty of Versailles was signed the following June, taking force
on January 10,1920.
DEC. 2, 1918
This excerpt is from a three-page letter on plain white paper written in pencil to Edward’s father.
We didn’t hear the news of the armistice until about 10:30 A.M. the morning of the 11th and we just
refused to believe it then. It seemed too good to be true, and not until it had been verified officially by
Division Hdqrs. would the men believe and then about the only expression of sentiment one could
hear was a deep sigh of relief and “Gosh!, I wonder how soon we’ll get home?”
While there’s no denying the fact that all of us are mighty glad it is all over, still I believe that many
of us ‘way down in our hearts, regret the fact that we will never get a chance to strike at Germany in
her own land. I notice that several of the papers state that the American soldiers are fraternizing with
and befriending German prisoners but that certainly is not the case with our Division for I have
never seen a bunch hold so whole souled a hatred for any person or anything as our men do the
Boche, and after having seen some of the things that I have seen I can’t blame them a bit; in fact, I
find myself experiencing the same loathing and hatred…I sometimes wish that the Armistice had
never been signed until Germany was completely wiped from the face of the earth.”
NOV. 11, 1918
This is a portion of a five-page letter written in black ink on plain white stationery to his mother
on Armistice Day. The 30th division’s name was blanked by censors.
I don’t wonder at all, Mama, that you all are proud of the ___th Division. They have really done
marvelous work and anywhere we go in France and people learn that we belong to “the 30th American”
we get a real royal reception. First, we broke the Hindenburg line and went ten or twelve miles further
and then we got in another big stunt and took every objective under very adverse circumstances. Of course, it has
been costly — our casualties among the fighting personnel having been well over 50% but then that is to be expected. I was awfully
distressed to hear of Frank William’s death. Didn’t know a thing about it until I got back from the hospital. Frank was a wonderful
officer and I understand that he was universally loved and respected throughout his entire regiment by both officers and men and
would undoubtedly have won a promotion in the near future.
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