On November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m., (the eleventh day and the eleventh hour) a cease-fire was declared in the trenches of World War I. The carnage that had cost over eight and a half million lives world-wide was over. This weekend we remember them, we honor them.
When Captain Mike Hogg came home, he and his brother Will and his sister Ima established Houston’s Memorial Park in honor of those who died in the Great War. It opened in 1925, and is still one of the largest urban parks in the nation.
On November 14, Captain Mike Hogg, Company D, lst Battalion, 180thInfantry Brigade, 360thRegiment, 90thDivision, wrote to his sister about the fateful morning of November 11. He was still at the front.
I am now only a few kilometers from where I was when we got the almost unbelievable news that there was to be a suspension of all hostilities at eleven o’clock. The Germans were only a few yards away and we were preparing to make adesperateattack that morning. I had already given up all idea of coming through. You should have seen the place where we spent the night—and such a night! Everybody and everything was frozen stiff.
We got the news at about ten-thirty. There was absolutely no demonstration. We could not make a sign or move, because of danger. Shells were still falling. At eleven, we heard the German bugles blow and the men shout. We then saw them get right up from in front of us and “beat it” back. All firing ceased. MY! But it was great. We were too tired and chilled, though, to realize what great luck we and the world in general were in. We have been through a great deal of fighting and I suppose are very lucky. . . .
They called it the Great War. No one in 1918 could imagine a greater one.
