By 11 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, in 1918, the war had ended. The Allies and Germany signed the armistice in France to stop the fighting on the Western Front. Incidentally, that was the day John F. Herbst registered for battle.

The young Kansas City resident was inducted as an American soldier on the very last day of World War I. He and a group of other brand new draftees waited in Union Station for orders to ship out. That’s when they got news of the armistice.

“The inductees were discharged on the spot and sent home,” Herbst’s son, John Herbst Jr., told the National World War I Museum and Memorial, to which he donated his father’s papers. The registration and discharge letters are dated the same day: the armistice.