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Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28, 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. Gavrilo Princip was a part of a Black Hand Secret Society. Franz Ferdinand was in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina when he and his wife got assassinated. Princip killed Ferdinand so Bosnia could be free of Austria-Hungary's rule. -
Austria-Hungary declared war with Serbia after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. When WWI started, Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia. Once they got in, they captured Belgrade. The invasion was not successful though. They got pushed back into their territory by the end of the year. -
The Battle of Jutland was the largest navel battle of WWI. German High Seas Fleet hoped to weaken the Royal Navy by launching an ambush on the British Grand Fleet in the North Sea. The action involved 250 ships and around 100,000 men. -
Theodore Kohls was not even 15 when he enlisted in the army. He lied and told the recruiters that he was 22. The recruiters didn't think anything of it so they didn't check his birth certificate. Now that we have his birth certificate, we know that he lied. Theodore lied because he wanted to fight battles against France. -
After being accepted, he was assigned to the 26th Regiment. It was one of the first units chosen to go to France. The journey took two weeks, and once there he trained with the 54th Regiment of the French Blue Devils.
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Theodore went into the trenches for the first time. Him and his company stayed in the reserve for 10 days. It snowed that night and it was the first snow that he had experienced in France. They wadded through the mud and water and stood in the rain all night. They stayed in the mud holes for 5 days without seeing a single German. -
Theodore was sent on his first patrol, seen as the first one of them to be killed or wounded. He went on his first wiring detail as well. It was done undercover at night. Three months had gone by, They slept in cold fields and had nothing to eat.
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They were riding on the sides of the trucks. There were 250 men, after riding all night they came to their final destination. They all got off the trucks and had to walk 22 miles to their billets. They had it easy for 3 days, but then came the biggest forced march of the First Division ever made. Day after day they marched. "Hiked like humans marching to hell", Theodore said.
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WWI ended with the signing of the Armistice on the Western Front. The representatives signed the Allies and Germany signed it. Basically both sides agreed to stop fighting on the Western Front. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwisj9WqWc0 (The Sound of Silence) Audio recording of the last minute of WWI.
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The last day of the war, Canadian forces captured the Belgian town of Mons, liberating an area that had been under German territory since 1914. The goal was to capture Mons without completely destroying it.