Smith: 85th anniversary of the Armistice Day Storm rekindles tragic event in hunting history
A huge storm on Armistice Day in 1940 ripped through the Midwest, killing 154 people, including many duck hunters. Milwaukee Journal outdoors editor Gordon MacQuarrie covered the tragic event.
When Allied and German officials signed an agreement in 1918 to end World War I, the 11th day of November became known around the world as the anniversary of the armistice of the “war to end all wars.”
In 1940 Armistice Day acquired another enormous historical reference, especially in the Midwest.
A ferocious storm ripped through the region, turning shirt-sleeve weather into a deadly blizzard of high winds and freezing temperatures.
The low pressure system, so strong it sank ships on Lake Michigan, set disastrous records across Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The Armistice Day Storm took 154 lives, including 13 in Wisconsin.
Since many of the dead were waterfowl hunters, the event became engrained in hunting history. And of all the tales told of the tragic storm, none did more to shed light on the fate of duck hunters that fateful day than the account written by Gordon MacQuarrie, then outdoors editor of the Milwaukee Journal.
MacQuarrie was not hunting that day but traveled to western Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota to cover the storm’s impact.
His story was published in the Nov. 13, 1940 Milwaukee Journal. It had a dateline of Winona, Minn. and a headline of “50 Mile Stretch Yields Scores of Bodies; Plane Aides in Search.” It was printed along with a story with no byline under the main header of “Icy Death Rides Gale on Duck Hunt Trail.”
“The winds of hell were loose on the Mississippi Armistice day and night,” MacQuarrie wrote. “They came across the prairies, from the south and west, a mighty, freezing, invisible force. They charged down from the river bluffs to the placid stream below and reached with deathly fingers for the life that beat beneath the canvas jackets of thousands of duck hunters.”
Nov. 11, 1940 was a holiday and, as the day dawned with unseasonably warm weather, many hunters ventured into marshes dressed in broadcloth shirts and a light, canvas jacket.
The difference is stark between 1940 hunter attire and today. Even greater, though, is the difference in weather forecasting and communication technology. Mobile phones allow contemporary hunters to not only track weather but to call for help.
The 1940 Armistice Day storm was a ferocious “panhandle hook” low-pressure system that brought wind gusts up to 75 mph and dropped the temperature from the 60s to the high teens in 12 hours.
The storm was rated as the worst windstorm in Milwaukee history, according to the Nov. 12, 1940 Milwaukee Journal. The mercury bottomed out at 5 degree Fahrenheit. The top wind speed in the city was clocked at 54 miles per hour.
The terrific winds were caused by the meeting of cold air rushing south from Canada, with a mass of warm, moist tropical air moving up from the Mississippi River valley, weatherman Frank H. Coleman told the Milwaukee Journal.
The sustained southwest gale produced major effects on the water level of Lake Michigan, including reports of a drop of 4.8 feet at Chicago, Ill. and a rise of 4 to 4.5 feet at Beaver Island, Mich., according to National Weather Service archives.
The NWS also reported the Fox River in northeastern Wisconsin lowered by 5 feet, the result of south and southwest winds, and forced paper mills and a power plant to suspend operations at Green Bay, Wis.
The winds were so strong that Milwaukee officials turned off the City Hall clock. “Even Time Yields!” read the blurb in the Nov. 12, 1940 Milwaukee Journal. “The hands of the city hall clock were wobbling so badly in the high wind Monday (Nov. 11) night that the mechanism was turned off to prevent damage. The hands were turned to a position that encountered the least wind resistance – a position that indicated 8:45. The clock hands will be left in that position until the wind abates.”
Saving a city clock is one thing. Hunters across the region had no warning of the life-threatening weather. Dozens were trapped in marshes.
“The wind did it, the furious wind that pierced any clothing, that locked outboard engines in sheaths of ice, that froze on faces and hands and clothing, so that survivors crackled when they got to safety and said their prayers,” MacQuarrie wrote. “Mother Nature caught hundreds of duck hunters on the Armistice holiday. She lured them out to the marshes with fine, whooping wind, and when she got them there she froze them like muskrats in traps. She promised ducks in the wind. They came all right, but by that time the duck hunters were playing a bigger game with the wind, and their lives were the stake.”
The storm’s toll began mounting on the night of Nov. 11, 1940. The Milwaukee Journal wrote the next day that “waters all over the state held sportsmen prisoned by sweep of the storm” and at least eight duck hunters were known dead in Wisconsin, stretching from the southeastern part of the state to the Mississippi River.
The known dead included: Edward Quick, a a Milwaukee mail carrier who died while hunting on Big Muskego Lake in Waukesha County, his body recovered by a Coast Guard boat sent from Kenosha; Lawrence Boender, 32, of Oshkosh drowned in Lake Butte des Morts; and Kenneth McFarland of Janesville, owner of one of the largest game farms in the Midwest, who drowned in the flats near Prairie du Chien when his skiff overturned.
Some hunters tried to make fires to stay warm. Others huddled with each other and their dogs.
None of course had a mobile phone to call 911.
The largest number of deaths occurred when ships sank on Lake Michigan.
“Scores of sailors and fishermen are believed to have lost their lives Monday night and Tuesday in what is described as possibly the worst storm that struck Lake Michigan in a generation,” the Milwaukee Journal wrote.
Most of the lives were lost near Muskegon, Mich., where the steamer William B. Davock with its crew of 53 broke in two and sank, and the Novadoc, a pulpwood carrier, with a crew of 10 was swept ashore at Juniper beach.
In some areas, pilots set out early Nov. 12, 1940 to try to locate survivors and guide rescues.
MacQaurrie wrote about one named Max Conrad, a pilot who flew a Piper Cub over the Mississippi River, finding hunters, directing rescue boats and even dropping whisky, matches, sandwiches and cigarettes.
“The ducks came and men died. They died underneath upturned skiffs as the blast sought them out on boggy, unprotected islands; they died trying to light fires and jumping and sparring trying to keep warm; they died sitting in skiffs. They died standing in river water to their hips, awaiting help; they died trying to help each other. A hundred tales of heroism will be told, long after the funerals are over.”
This year a tragedy involving two hunters in Colorado drew national attention. The men, who were on a backcountry hunt for elk, were struck and killed by lightning.
It’s hard to imagine the scale of coverage if more than a dozen hunters, anglers, campers or others were killed in a storm.
Thankfully it’s less likely to happen due to modern technology.
But at least once a year Armistice Day, and the legacy of a terrible storm, reminds those of us who love the outdoors to stay as prepared and aware as possible.
