He was referring to Nov. The reason for his excitement was that he had an unenviable front-row perspective of the war: he was headed to Sedan, France, with members of the well-known Rainbow Division of the American Expeditionary Forces. Back in Chattanooga, his future hometown for a few years, the sound was anything but the silence he experienced on the battlefield that day.
I once wrote a story about all the celebration that occurred when news reached Chattanooga that an armistice had been signed, and I concluded after looking through the old newspapers on microfilm that Chattanooga had likely never experienced collectively so much spontaneous joy, even after World War II ended. All kinds of noisy sounds of celebration were taking place, as people perhaps innocently thought this might genuinely be the end of all wars.
I had written that story in about the time I had interviewed some of the last-remaining World War I veterans still living in Chattanooga. I remember sitting around a living room at one of their homes interviewing about four or five of them.
Someone had worked hard to get them all together on my behalf. Two or three of them were quite frail by that time 70 years after the war had ended, but one or two were still able to offer some truly interesting memories. I remember one man told me that World War I was somewhat unique in that it was fought by countries that all shared the same values, and a sense of chivalry existed.
As evidence, he said that if two planes from opposing sides were in air-to-air combat and one of the planes retreated after being hit, the pilot of the other plane usually let it go rather than trying to continue pursuing it while it was in trouble. Unfortunately, my grandfather was not one of those at the reunion, as he had already died in another town. He had moved to Cordele, Ga. He had died more than five years earlier -- in February at the age of 88 — while I was in one of my last quarters at the University of Georgia.
