Goodwin Thortved (l) and Eugene Studlien (r) at Camp Lewis, Washington, 1918

Clay County Histories

Markus Krueger | Program Director HCSCC

In the early morning of November 11th, 1918, German diplomats met Allied officials to negotiate an end to the Great War. At 5am, the two sides signed an Armistice – an agreement to stop fighting. Because it was the 11th day of the 11th month, the negotiators thought it appropriate to begin the cease-fire at the 11th hour. Soldiers on every side spent those morning hours nervously hoping they wouldn’t be the last one to die.
The news of peace spread like a prairie fire around the world, reaching the USA at 1:45am Central Time. Within a half hour, Moorhead mayor Nels Melvey ordered the fire siren to blow in celebration. There were rumors of peace negotiations, so everyone knew what it meant. Church bells soon joined in and rang thro

ugh the night.
Sisters Dora and Adele Thortvedt woke up on their farm hearing whistles from Moorhead 7 miles away. Dora and Adele had special cause for relief. Their brother Goodwin was an infantryman on the front line in France, as were many of the boys their age from the surrounding farms. Dora wrote in her diary that day:
“Victory War is Over Also Mama’s birthday… Telephone is busy this morning at 3:00 this morning Adele and I woke. I dreamed I heard our threshing engine whistle, which proved to have been the whistles in Mhd and Fgo It was then a tremendous blowing of whistles ringing of train bells and church bells. It impressed us beyond words. I woke Pa, whistles blew every half hours until day light. We knew it meant – Peace ‘The War Is Over,’ A wave of Joy throughout the world, – now if Goodwin and the rest of our boys are alright we are perfectly happy.”
The Thortvedt sisters drove into Moorhead to join the spontanious community party that broke out. Their father, old Norwegian pioneer Levi Thortvedt, stayed home. The phone rang at 2pm. A garbled voice on a bad line read a telegram from the war department. Levi made out the words “dead of pneumonia yesterday.” His heart sank. But as the conversation went on, he realized it wasn’t his son Goodwin. The soldier who died of Spanish Influenza was his friend and farmhand Thor Sheridan. His heart lightened, but he also felt guilty for being relieved by the death of a friend.
His family did not know it yet, but Goodwin was not alright. He was in an army hospital, recovering from being shot in the elbow by a German machinegunner. Goodwin did not know it yet, but the same man who shot him also killed his best friend Eugene Studlien with a bullet through the head.
November 11 became Armistice Day, a national holiday to celebrate the end of World War I, which they called “the war to end all wars.” Wars didn’t end, though, and we Americans mostly forgot our nation’s third deadliest war. Each subsequent generation had their own war with their own veterans to remember. Their own Goodwins and Eugenes and Thors. Armistice Day became Veterans Day.