The Wereth 11 - The Sacrifice of the 333rd Field Artillery Battilion
A Black Man's Army
While listening to the PodCast Ultra (Season II) by Rachel Maddow she spoke of the Malmedy Massacre. This was the slaugther of WWII U.S. soldiers during the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. While researching this massacre I came upon the another. The murder of 11 African American GI’s called the Wereth 11.
The Wereth Massacre was the brutal killing of 11 African-American GIs from the 333rd Field Artillery Battilion. This unknown story of American History, African American History and the brutalness of war makes ones blood run cold. The story of the Wereth 11—is a story of soldiers of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion serving their country and in doing so were brutally executed by SS troops after the artillerymen had surrendered.
The “Wereth 11”:
Tech Sergeant William Edward Pritchett: from Alabama
Tech Sergeant James Aubrey Stewart: from West Virginia
Staff Sergeant Thomas J. Forte: from Louisiana
Corporal Mager Bradley: from Mississippi
Private First Class George Davis: from Alabama
Private First Class James Leatherwood: from Mississippi
Private First Class George W. Moten: from Texas
Private First Class Due W. Turner: from Arkansas
Private Curtis Adams: from South Carolina
Private Robert Green: from Georgia
Private Nathanial Moss: from Texas
The soldiers were assigned to the segregated 333rd Field Artillery Battalion. The 333rd were some of the first African Americans trained for combat in WWII rather than placed in service positions. These men entered the segregated US Armed Forces, where they slept in separate barracks, ate in separate mess halls, and endured discrimination from white GIs and German Nazi Prisoners of war.
After training at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, on July 19, 1944, they landed at Utah Beach in Normandy. We have seen so many American GI movies that literally blot out the service of black GI’s. I want to state that Yes there were GI’s that landed on the Beaches during D-Day. History is so important.
The 333rd became highly proficient at loading and firing the massive 155mm Howitzer, once firing four rounds in 90 seconds, and blowing off the turret of a German tank more than nine miles away.
The 333rd Field Artillery Battalion provided fire support for Major General Troy Middleton’s US VIII Corps, the battalion saw heavy action in most of the major battles in France during the summer of 1944, including the bitter six-week Battle of Brest, Saint-Malo, La Haye-du-Puits, and Rennes.
So impressed was he by their skill and precision, Sergeant Bill Davidson, a reporter from Yank Magazine, wrote: “It [the 333rd FAB] is rated by the Corps … as one of the best artillery units under the Corps’ control. And I’ve heard doughboys of five divisions watch men of the battalion rumble past in four-ton prime movers and say: ‘Thank God those guys are behind us!’ ”
The 333rd provided fire support as long as they had ammunition, holding back German troops until they were helplessly overrun and captured. In these first 48 to 72 hours of intensive raging battle, more than 20,000 GIs were captured, killed ot marched away as prisoners, including most of the 333rd, but 11 managed to avoid capture and fled the forest carring with them only two rifles and little ammunition.
The Massacre:
The 11 approached a home in Wereth, Belgium, owned by Mathias Langer. He offered them shelter and food. The area they were in had been part of Germany for hundreds of years, until it was annexed by Belgium after World War I, and three of the nine families in the village were known to be still loyal to Germany. The wife of a German soldier who lived in Wereth told members of the notorious 1st SS Panzer Division deployed in the area that black American soldiers were hiding in her village. The 11 surrendered without a fight.
The Langers expressed their concern about the welfare of the 11, but the German officer told them not to worry—pretty soon they would not be feeling the coldness. The Langers’ last view of the Americans, at about 7 pm on December 17, 1944, was of them running ahead of the Schwimmwagen into the evening darkness.
Evidence concludes the 11 were run about 900 yards into a cow pasture far from the eyes of those within the hamlet. Shortly thereafter, residents claimed to hear automatic gunfire then nothing.
The Aftermath:
The frozen bodies of the victims were discovered six weeks later, when the Allies re-captured the area. Corporal Ewall Seida was the first American to lay eyes on them on February 13, 1945. His findings went back to Major James L. Baldwin, regimental S-2 (Intelligence Officer). On February 15, the bodies were laid before medical examiner Captain William Everett. By that time, the evidence of the December 17, 1944, mass murder at Malmedy was well known, but there was a major difference between this murder and the 85 killed at Malmedy. The SS troops had battered the black soldiers' faces, broken their legs with rifle butts, cut off some of their fingers, stabbed some with bayonets, and had shot at least one soldier while he was bandaging a comrade's wounds.
An investigation was immediately initiated. Statements by the Langer family and the army photographer were carried out by the 99th Div. Unit. The case was then forwarded to a "war crimes investigation unit". The U.S. Army spent two years investigating the Wereth mass murder, but authorities stated they could find no one responsible for the deaths—no one could be identified as a murderer. No witnesses testified, and there was never enough evidence—no unit insignia, vehicle numbers, etc.—to charge anyone. It was only known that they had to be from the 1st SS Panzer Division. The Werth 11 were buried, seven of the men were buried in the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery, Belgium. The four others were transferred to their families in America after the end of the war and buried there.
In February 1947, almost two years to the day of the tragedy itself, the Army closed its investigation. Whoever committed the murders was never identified or located. The Langers were not sure of the specific SS unit. In 1948, the case was dropped. The murder of the "Wereth 11" was simply forgotten! In 1949, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee investigated a dozen recognized war crimes of this nature in Europe. They never knew about the Wereth 11.
The 11 Soldiers – U.S. Memorial Wereth:
The Langer family, a few historians, and Dr. Norman S. Lichtenfeld, an orthopedic surgeon in Mobile, Alabama, and the son of a 106th Infantry Division veteran, formed a group to raise funds to create a memorial to the 11 victims. Their dreams were realized on May 23, 2004, when a memorial to the “Wereth 11”—the only memorial to black American soldiers of World War II in Europe—was formally dedicated on the Langer property near the location where the massacre took place and where the bodies were found.
References
History Net (8/3/2024) The Wereth 11, a Little-Known Massacre During the Battle of the Bulge. HistoryNet Retrieved from https://www.historynet.com/the-wereth-11-a-little-known-massacre-during-the-battle-of-the-bulge/.
“Emerging from history: Massacre of 11 black soldiers,” by Jim Michaels, USA Today, Nov. 8, 2013.
Someone, don’t remember who, said the moods of persons reading Family Circle will be different to that of one reading Dostoevsky.
Reading you my mood is more somber. However, reading the reality of the inhuman behavior of humans is reality.
This makes me wonder how the term inhuman, meaning not human, makes sense when bad behavior is very human.
We must win this election and tackle racism head on. We must become WOKE
Thank you. Keep posting these history lessons. 🙏