But, despite those documents and a telegram informing his family of his death. Swantie E. Swanson was not killed that day. And, on this Veterans Day 64 years after the armistice was signed, the McCookite remembers vividly where he was the day World War I ended.

"I was on an operating table in a field hospital (near Nevers, France) just coming out of the ether when I heard someone say, Well, it was signed this morning." I shouted: "Who said that?" and was informed the captain was speaking, Swanson recalled in a 1937 interview with the McCook Daily Gazette.

Wednesday the 87-year-old veteran confirmed that, on that day as he came out of the ether after an operation for wounds received the previous September, the doctor informed him that the armistice was signed at 11 am, that day - Nov. 11, 1918. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

''That's a good question." Swanson says when people ask him why the documents were sent. It was, he said, apparently just a mix-up on the part of the Army.

Family members were not too upset about the death notices, however, because they had received a letter from Swanson that was dated after Sept. 29, 1818 before they received the telegram saying he died on that date.

The death certificate read: "This is to certify that Swantie E. Swanson Private 1st Class, Company B, 129th Machine Gun Battalion, died with honor in the service of his country on the twenty-ninth day of September, 1918." It was signed by then Adjutant General A. W. Robertson.

The certificate signed by Pershing, then commander-in-chief, said that on Sept. 19, 1918, Swanson ''bravely laid down his life for the cause of his country.''

In addition to those two documents and the telegram, Swanson also has the purple heart he received and other memorabilia of the war, including his first dog tags, government issue razor and the Bible he carried. He also has a plaque signed by President Woodrow Wilson stating he was wounded in action.

Swanson, as a member of the 129th Machine Gun Battalion, 35th Division, saw duty with the British at Flanders Fields and went on to the Voges Sector and then the Mouse Argonne Sector before he was wounded.

"Funny things happen," he said in recalling that if a captain had not ordered double time just before he was shot, he wou1d have been where the man following him with a tripod for a machine gun was at. "We left him in France," commented Swanson who was struck by four pieces of shrapnel.

The shrapnel did not kill Swanson, who was carrying a machine gun in front of the man who was killed, but he required two operations and four months to recover. The worst wound was in the fleshy part of his back.

When he returned to the United States from his $33-a-month tour of duty, Swanson did not immediately apply for compensation, but after a couple of years he did and a doctor determined that he had suffered a 60 percent disability.

That did not stop him from farming near the present location on Hugh Butler Lake, nor from working for the Agriculture and Stabilization Conservation Service for 30 years.

Swanson, who is commander of World War I Barracks 365 of the VFW, and is a past commander of the VFW's District 2, moved to McCook from the farm in 1948, but the Swanson family still has the farm north of Town.