The Alaska daily empire., 1920-11-20
ALASKAN MAJOR
 SENDS MESSAGE.
 THAT ENDS WAR
Major Beaumont, Who Went From Anchorage to France,
 Possesses Message.

top in the recent war campaigns hundreds went to the front to fight =, but 1t remained for an Alaskan to actually end the war, that is, an Al sskan sent the famous message that | he arlnistice with Germany had heen signed and all hnstilities should cease. t fA
 The Alaskan who ended the war on November Il, .i191S, was George D. Beaumont now a major, who was rrior to the opening of hostilities with Germany, assistant superintend ent of telegraph for the Alaskan En- gineering Commission, with head quarters at Anchorage. Major Beau mont is now in Seattle where he ia 1 located
 The story of the sending of the great message, previous and after history of Major Beaumont, is con tained in recent Seattle Times. Major eBaumont received the verbal message at the time of receiving the written message, to Shoot it, she's over," The Major said he had sent many messages during his thirty wears at the key but when he sat down to shoot that special one. he would not have cared to have had any other key pounders see him. The copy of the original message is framed and hangs in Major Beau. Bellevue avenue, Seattle. ,s
 Major Beaumont, at the time of sending the message ending the war. was captain in the capacity of ' telegraph officer for the First Army under command of Lieut. Gen. Hunt CT Liggett with headquarters al Souilly, France, personally dispatched the fateful message which was brought to him by messenger from Gen. Ligget's office at 7:25 o'clock on the morning of November IL 1918, and which ended the war for some 5O0,000 American soldiers of the historic First Army.
 At the same time similar messages were being dispatched to the Second Army in the St. Mihiel sector, to the csief of the air service, artillery and staff departments and to all bases comprising the remainder of 2,000,O00 American soldiers in France.
 Describes Scene
 Major Beaumont describes the occasion as follows,
 1 We stayed up. all night" said the major. Myself, and the shift on duty in our portable telegraph of. flee. And by the way, that was the only portable telegraph office in the A. E. F. It was an experiment and it surely was making good Several times the fact that 1t was on wheels was all that saved it from destruc- 1 ton.
 q took that crew who were with me at Headquarters. away from Maj l.. w. Noes, another Seattle man in the telegraph service. He's here in town now with the Western Union. They were a fine bunch of boys. The morning of Nov. 11th, every one of us was tired out We had been on our toes for four days and the strain was beginning to tell on us was sitting in a little office I had on the trailer and had ceased to keep track of the cigars I had smoked The boys were out in the instrument room lighting fresh smokers from the stumps of old ones. To every one of Us the minutes seemed like ages and the same atmosphere prevailed everywhere around headquarters.
 At just 7:25 in the morning a messenger from the generals office appeared at the outer door of the trailer and handed up a typed mes sage to one of the boys with the words Shoot it-she's over! jump. cd from my chair in time to grab l the message and glance over it.
 Fellows" I told them. tits all off You can all step back and watch i the old man send a telegram and did I shot it on a through wire then jumped to another instrument to the Third Army Corps. At the same time two of my men. Master Signal Electrician Moss and Sergeant l Schneiderhaus whom I thought es pecially worthy of the honor, were sending the message to the Fifth Army Corps and to the Second Col onial French, respectively. And dc you know that Schneiderhaus, one oi the men who informed our troops that the Germans were beaten. was a uatnralized American of German birthl
 Later. the same message was sent to all outfits, first by radio and then by phone and then by motor cycle messenger. But that message didn't actually end it all. it merely notified the troops that by II o'cloc, sthe lost shot must be fired and tha Fthe bombardment which had beer kept up continuously for 49 days would end in less than four hours I've been told that some of then made good use of those last foul hours of actual warfare, and alsC that some were killed arter the, had learned that the war was over.