The NJ Police Chief Magazine Volume 26, Number 1 | Page 14

The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | September 2019
The Wereth 11: Lessons Learned from the Battle of the Bulge
Dave Annets, Detective Chief Inspector (Ret)
Hampshire, United Kingdom
As part of the recent NJSACOP “Battle of the Bulge Leadership Experiential Learning,” led as usual by Professor Pat Schuber
and Dean Hollands, our delegation visited a new site in Wereth, Belgium, where Dean, our eminent leader for the day, placed a
flag of remembrance to the fallen African American soldiers of World War 2.
The site we visited records the “Wereth Massacre”, one of 17 massacres that took place over the
course of the Battle of the Bulge, more collectively known as the Malmedy Massacres. I had
previously heard of the Malmedy Massacres committed by Joachim Piepers’ 1st SS Panzer
Division, but never about Wereth.
So, in this review I will not be looking at the Malmedy massacres in full, but rather focusing on a
specific event from which we have much to learn from - that which occurred in Wereth, on the
border between Germany and Belgium.
This is a story of heroism and love, evil and hate, diversity and human rights, all in equal
measure.
The men who died here were men of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion unit, attached to the
106th Infantry Division, supporting the 590th Artillery Battalion, who were 11 miles behind the
Siegfried Line when the Germans started their counter-offensive (known to history as the `Battle
of the Bulge’) in an effort to turn the tide of the war in their favor.
What distinguished this unit was that they were an all African American unit, one of only nine
such units in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge, some of whom died here in Wereth and
some of whom went on to appear at Bastogne in later battles. They were from Texas, Mississippi,
Alabama, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Arkansas (amongst other places).
At this time, during World War 2, the American army was a segregated army. The roles that
most (but not all) African American soldiers were given would generally include tasks such as
field artillery, driving trucks, operating the postal system, and other such tasks such as
organizing burial parties.
Those police officers that came with the NJSACOP on the Normandy Leadership Experience will recall some mention about the
absence of black soldiers arriving on Omaha Beach. In actual fact these brave soldiers were there, and were responsible for
raising hydrogen-filled barrage balloons, setting them up in the skies above the beaches, to protect other soldiers coming onto
the beaches from being strafed by enemy fighter planes. Whereas the soldiers coming in on the landing craft were to get
through the beach and onto land to fight as soon as possible, the most dangerous place during that conflict at that time was to
remain on the beach - the job given to the African American soldier. You may recall the famous line that only ‘those who were
dead or going to die’ remained on the beach. It was these men that were called upon to remain on the beaches to deploy the
barrage balloons, yet they were not permitted to fight alongside their non-African American colleagues in arms.
This segregation carried on throughout the whole World War 2 and until 1947 when the US armed forces finally became
desegregated by order of President Harry Truman.
Perhaps about 400,000 African Americans joined the US Army, with some 260,000 African American GIs serving in the
European Theatre of Operations. At first they were always in support roles, yet as the Army’s manpower requirements during
the war escalated, other African American units came to the fore, such as the Tuskegee Airmen, and the 761st Tank Battalion
unit (Italian campaign) and several other African American artillery units. One of them was the 333rd FAB, which came ashore
in Normandy at Utah Beach. They brought with them heavy guns, (155mm, the biggest guns we had in this campaign); these
men were not only brave soldiers but they were also skillful gunners, as observed in reports of their abilities during earlier
fighting.
So, back to the story, and back to Wereth. So rapid was the German advance when Hitler launched it on December 16th,1944,
that the young guys of 333rd Field Artillery Battalion found themselves being ordered, almost immediately, to displace
(withdraw) with their guns further back toward Schoenberg, as the last thing the Army wanted was artillery to be taken
capture by the Germans. They made their way at the beginning of December up to the Eifel-Ardenen outside of St. Vith (our
next destination) where they were positioned to the left of the 106th division firing into the Germans as they advanced, but
they quickly came up against small arms fire and heavy mortars.
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