World War I ended 99 years ago this weekend.

But it's what happened 100 years ago this weekend — just one year before the Armistice — that reminded Jersey Shore residents that no American could assume he or she was isolated from the horrors of the global conflict.

While we tend to think of terrorism as an evolution of modern warfare, the threat of an attack on the homeland by one or more individuals was as real a century ago as it is today.

In the Asbury Park Press on Nov. 12, 1917, the newspaper reported that two German men — Emil Egeling and Christian Scheibel — had been arrested aboard a New York-bound train at Long Branch on what is today NJ Transit's North Jersey Coast Line.

Authorities said the suspects had come to Monmouth County from New York to pick up two bombs that had been shipped to a third German at the Jersey Shore on Election Day the week before, using a postal express service.

Unbeknownst to Egeling and Scheibel, the federal government had become aware of the plot and intercepted the explosives in Long Branch, while undercover U.S. marshals tailed Egeling and Scheibel to New Jersey from New York.

The two men would arrive to discover that there were no bombs for them to take custody of and that their co-conspirator appeared to be missing. As they boarded a train for the return trip to New York empty-handed, they must have been wondering how far and how fast they could get away on the $517 they had between them — the equivalent of $9,452 in 2017 money when adjusted for inflation.

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"The bombs were seized by the government several days ago, and since that time and until their arrest Saturday the men were shadowed by government agents," explained the article, a wire service dispatch that reported no details about the plot, its origin or who Egeling and Scheibel were. The question was raised as to whether Egeling and Scheibel were even their real names.

During both world wars, news organizations accepted or tolerated the expectation that information would be subjected to censorship by the federal government if deemed to be in the interest of national security. So did the American public. While it's not stated if this was the case here, the intended target of the explosives and the fate of the men apprehended were not made public at the time, and there was no follow-up to the story.

Instead, the article focused on the heroism of one of the U.S. marshals who single-handedly made the arrests.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Frank T. Quinn boarded the train at Long Branch, which was operated at that time by the Pennsylvania Railroad and packed with soldiers from then-Camp Dix who were on leave for the weekend.

Once the train started moving, Quinn confronted the suspects and attempted to make the arrests. There was a struggle at first, as the men resisted. Some of the soldiers aboard offered to help subdue Egeling and Scheibel, but Quinn managed to do so on his own and assured the servicemen that their assistance would not be needed.

The Germans caused no further trouble and were removed from the train at Newark, where they were taken to the Essex County Jail, all according to the article.

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"When questioned concerning their presence in the Long Branch vicinity the men said they went there to get an automobile belonging to a man in New York," the Press reported. "The reasons the arrests were not made before, it is understood, was in order to locate other suspects in the plot."

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"The bombs were examined by ordnance experts at the Sandy Hook proving grounds, and it was said they proved to be of the time clock type and that each was loaded with a powerful explosive," the article said.

The article noted that additional arrests were expected. However, there was never any subsequent article about the incident.

Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359 or elarsen@gannettnj.com