On December 16th, German artillery began shelling the Schonberg area.
With reports of rapid German infantry and armored progress, the 333rd
FAB was ordered to displace further west but to leave ‘C’ Battery and
Service Battery in position to support the 14th Cavalry and 106th Division.
By the morning of December 17th, these two positions were rapidly overrun
by the advancing German troops and armor. While many personnel tried to
escape through Schonberg, eleven men of the Service Battery went overland
in a northwest direction in the hopes of reaching American lines.
At about 3 pm, they approached the first house in the nine-house hamlet of
Wereth, Belgium, owned by Mathius Langer.
The men were cold, hungry, and exhausted after walking cross-country through
the deep snow. They had two rifles between them. The family welcomed them
and gave them food. But this small part of Belgium did not necessarily welcome
Americans as “Liberators.†This area had been part of Germany before the First
World War and many of its citizens still saw themselves as Germans and
not Belgians.
The people spoke German but had been forced to become Belgian citizens
when their land was given to Belgium as part of the First World War
repatriations. Unlike the rest of Belgium, many people in this area welcomed
the Nazis in 1940 and again in 1944, because of their strong ties to Germany.
Mathius Langer was not one of these.
At the time he took the Black Americans in he was hiding two Belgian deserters
from the German Army and had sent a draft age son into hiding, so the Nazis
would not conscript him. A family friend was also at the house when the
Americans appeared. Unfortunately, unknown to the Langers
she was a Nazi sympathizer
About an hour later, a German patrol of the 1st SS Division, belonging to
Kampfgruppe Hansen arrived in Wereth. It is believed Nazi sympathizer
informed the SS that there were Americans at the Langer house. When the
SS troops approached the house the eleven Americans surrendered quickly,
without resistance.
The Americans were made to sit on the road, in the cold, until dark. The
Germans then marched them down the road. Gunfire was heard during the
night. In the morning, villagers saw the bodies of the men in a ditch. Because
they were afraid that the Germans might return, they did not touch the
dead soldiers.
The snow covered the bodies and they remained entombed in the snow
until mid- February when villagers directed a U.S. Army Grave Registration
unit to the site. The official report noted that the men had been brutalized,
with broken legs, bayonet wounds to the head, and fingers cut off. Prior to
their removal an Army photographer took photographs of the bodies to
document the brutality of the massacre.
An investigation was immediately begun with a “secret†classification.
Testimonies were taken of the Graves Registration officers, the Army
photographer, the Langers and the woman who had been present
when the soldiers arrived. She testified that she told the
SS the Americans had left!The case was then forwarded to a
War Crimes Investigation unit. However the investigation showed that
no positive identification of the murderers could be found (i.e. no
unit patches, vehicle numbers, etc) only that they were from the
1st SS Panzer Division.
By 1948 the “secret†classification was cancelled and the paperwork filed
away. The murder of the Wereth 11 was seemingly forgotten and unavenged!
Seven of the men were buried in the American Cemetery at Henri-Chapelle,
Belgium, and the other four were returned to their families for burial after the
war ended. The Wereth 11 remained unknown, it seemed, to all but their
families until 1994
Herman Langer, the son of Mathius Langer, who had given the men food and
shelter, erected a small cross, with the names of the dead, in the corner of
the pasture where they were murdered, as a private gesture from the
Langer family.
But the memorial and the tiny hamlet of Wereth remained basically obscure.
In a tiny hamlet with no school or shops there were no signs on the roadways
to indicate the memorial, and it was not listed in any guides or maps to the
Battle of the Bulge battlefield. Even people looking for it had trouble finding
it in the small German speaking community.
In 2001, three Belgium citizens embarked on the task of creating a fitting
memorial to these men and additionally to honor all Black GI’s of World War II.
With the help of an American physician in Mobile, Alabama, whose father fought
and was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, a grassroots publicity
and fund-raising endeavor was begun, and has had modest success.
There are now road signs indicating the location of the memorial, and the
Belgium Tourist Bureau lists it in the 60th Anniversary “Battle of the Bulgeâ€
brochures. Three families of the murdered men have been located, including
one U.S. gravesite.
Enough money has been raised to purchase the land the current memorial is
on and further monies are needed to provide for a modest monument, which
can be easily accessed by the public. It is believed that this will be the only
memorial to Black G.I.’s of World War II in Europe. Contributions will be greatly
appreciated and go entirely to the construction and preservation of the
memorial. The dedication of the memorial is planned for the 60th anniversary
year of the Battle of the Bulge in 2004.
The goal is to make the Wereth 11 and all Black G.I.’s “visible†to all Americans
and to history. They, like so many others, paid the ultimate price for our freedom.
Members of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion killed at Wereth.
(Battery to which they were assigned)
Nathaniel Moss(unk)*
Due W. Turner(svc) *
James A. Stewart(unk) *
Curtis Adams(med) *
George Davis(svc) *
Thomas J. Forte(c- Mess Sgt) *
George W. Moten(hq) *
Mager Bradley(svc)
Robert Green(svc)
William M. Pritchett(svc)
Jim Leatherwood©
* Buried in U. S. Military Cemetery, Henri-Chapelle, Liege, Belgium.
Sgtleo 
