World War I memorial is sad, but not quite correct
A single war death has the ability to shock and sadden us 100 years later.
Jay Pitner of Mequon was strolling recently through the Allen Centennial Garden in Madison when he spotted a memorial in honor of the sons of Gold Star Mothers, meaning moms of service members who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
Near the bottom is an inscription saying the monument was made possible by the untiring efforts of Mrs. W.B. Esser, whose son, Werner Jacob Esser, was killed in action on Nov. 11, 1918.
“I was a history major at UW, but I didn’t need that education to know that World War I ended on Nov. 11, 1918,” Pitner told me in an email.
“I realized Mrs. Esser’s son was killed on the last day of the war. The last day. His death was pointless. As a parent, I couldn’t imagine how devastating the news of the death must have been to Mrs. Esser.”
Pitner asked if I could tell him more about this soldier.
In the fog of war, it often took a long time to figure out the details of a soldier’s death and to inform the family.
With help from Lee Grady, reference archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society, I saw an article from The Capital Times in Madison from Feb. 19, 1919 — more than three months after Esser was killed — saying his mother was just informed that he was wounded and in a military hospital.
Eventually, the family was told that Esser was killed on Nov. 11, 1918, the final morning of the war, which ended officially at 11 a.m.
His grave marker at Resurrection Cemetery in Madison shows the date of death as Nov. 11. And the monument that Pitner saw at Allen Centennial Garden, which was dedicated in 1935, says Nov. 11.
So it’s written in stone, but is apparently off by a day. The Wisconsin Veterans Museum, which has the official records of Wisconsin service members from all wars, found a notation about Esser from the War Department dated Jan. 18, 1921, saying, “Investigation has developed the fact that above-named soldier was killed in action Nov. 10, 1918, and the date of death heretofore furnished you (is) erroneous.”
Kevin Hampton, curator of history at the Veterans Museum, told me, “The thing to take note of about these records from 100 years ago is that it’s just as chaotic as you’d expect warfare to be. This is a story of how confusing the last few days, the last week of the war really was.”
Everyone knew the war’s end was coming, but the Allies wanted to make sure they were pushing Germany out of France and to make it crystal clear the Germans had no option but to accept the armistice terms, Hampton said.
“The fighting literally goes up to the very last minute,” he said, with some 2,000 dead on all sides in the final 11 hours of the war.
At least six soldiers from Wisconsin were killed on Nov. 11. Many others, like Esser, lost their lives on Nov. 10, Hampton said.
Esser, an infantry soldier, died in the Meuse-Argonne drive in Lorraine, France. He was 28 and the only son of Werner B. and Sophia Esser, who lived on University Avenue in Madison. Young Werner managed a shoe store on State Street.
Esser’s body was buried in France and disinterred at his family’s request and returned to the United States in July 1921. His funeral was held Aug. 3, 1921, at Holy Redeemer Church in Madison.
Esser’s family suffered greatly, regardless of whether he died on the last day of the war or the second last. But it’s curious that the wrong date was chiseled into his gravestone seven months after the War Department corrected the error, and on the Gold Star memorial 14 years after that.
According to a column by George Hesselberg in the Wisconsin State Journal in 2004, the memorial was originally located in the garden at Wisconsin General Hospital and moved to another location before landing at the Centennial Garden, which was dedicated in 1989.
Like the sundial that tells time atop the memorial, Esser’s death as listed on the stone represents a close approximation. We know now it was not on the final day of the war that was to end all wars.
No matter.
“In the garden of memory,” the memorial proclaims, “the spirit of their sacrifice lives on forever.”