‘Peace seemed as far away as ever’
WWI soldier from Wisconsin died hours before end of fighting
MADSON – Morris Togstad didn’t return home from World War I until three years after the guns stopped firing.
The 21-year-old Wisconsin National Guard soldier, who had worked as a Wisconsin State Journal sportswriter, was in the first Wisconsin unit to fight on German soil. He earned the French Croix de Guerre for gallantry and fought in the bloodiest conflict of a brutal war — the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne.
Heading into the winter of 1918, there had been rumors the war was ending soon, but to Togstad and other soldiers on the front lines, it didn’t seem that way. Soldiers were still shooting at each other, artillery shells continued to rain down indiscriminately and planes dropped bombs from the sky.
On the morning of Nov. 10, 1918, Togstad wrote his folks back home in Madison. “Although rumors of approaching peace were frequent, the activities about (me) were such that the peace seemed as far away as ever,” he said.
That afternoon Togstad, a 2nd lieutenant in the 127th Infantry Battalion, took charge of a platoon that had been ordered to bring up mortar shells to be fired at the German army.
The enemy was shelling the road the platoon was supposed to use so Togstad and his exhausted men were told to take shelter in nearby woods and wait for the firing to end.
They were lying on the ground when a German plane dropped a bomb that exploded near Togstad and his friend Cliff Bewick. Wounded in the leg, Bewick heard Togstad calling “Cliff, Cliff, I ...”
Togstad never finished the sentence, according to a biographical guide to Forest Hill Cemetery.
Togstad was buried the next day, which turned out to be the last day of the war. He died less than 24 hours before the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
Like all battlefield casualties, Togstad was buried near where he was killed. A few years later when the U.S. government began collecting war dead for burial in American cemeteries in France, families were given the option of bringing their loved one home. Togstad’s mom and dad wanted their son to return to Madison.
Now Togstad is one of roughly a dozen Madison casualties later brought home for burial at Forest Hill Cemetery, the resting place of many Civil War veterans, Wisconsin governors, Madison mayors and other prominent citizens.
Keeping their memories alive
This year, in honor of the centennial of the end of World War I, Togstad and other casualties were part of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum’s annual Talking Spirits Cemetery Tours. On the tours, local actors don period dress and share Civil War and World War I stories through portrayals of Wisconsin soldiers and citizens buried at Forest Hill.
“It’s our responsibility to come out here and keep their memory alive,” said Kevin Hampton, Wisconsin Veterans Museum curator of history. “We knew we had to tell (Togstad’s) story. He was so close to surviving the war.”
The Madison men who died in France are mostly buried in the same area.
Among them was Marion Cranefield, one of the first Madison men killed in World War I. Cranefield was a University of Wisconsin-Madison junior when he joined the Army. He had tried to enlist the previous year to take part in the U.S. Army’s pursuit of Pancho Villa but was turned down because he was too thin. He wrote home from France, telling his family “it’s a wonderful country and worth dying for.”
An amateur archaeologist, Cranefield loved history and was an Abraham Lincoln buff. Stone implements, pipes and potsherds (broken pieces of ceramic found at archeology sites) collected by Cranefield between 1908 and 1917 were donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Badly wounded in a charge near Roncheres, France, Cranefield was urging his men forward when he was shot in the head. His 15-year-old brother Harold sent a telegram to Cranefield’s twin brother Paul, who was at military training in St. Louis.
The telegram said simply: Marion officially reported killed July 31. Square the account, Paul.
Cranefield, too, was buried near where he fell. And when his family was asked if they wanted their son’s body, they said yes.
“Once they could identify them — a lot of these guys were not buried in coffins, they were mostly wrapped in blankets or whatever they had — they put them in caskets and transported them on ships to New Jersey,” said Tom Ludka, a local historian who conducts tours and research on veterans buried in Milwaukee cemeteries.
In some areas, mortuary teams first had to clear unexploded ordnance to get to bodies. Troops were buried with dog tags and their uniforms which featured collar insignia of their unit which simplified identification.
Once coffins traveled back to the United States by ship, they were loaded onto trains for the final journey to their hometowns. That’s how the bodies of Togstad, Cranefield and the other World War I soldiers who had been killed were returned to Madison.
At Togstad’s funeral on Sept. 8, 1921, local news accounts estimated the crowd of mourners at 3,000. Five of the six pallbearers who had carried Togstad’s body to his grave in France returned to perform the same task in Madison. And taps was sounded by a bugler who had served under Togstad.