The NJ Police Chief Magazine Volume 26, Number 1 | Page 15

The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | September 2019
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The 333rd were almost over-run as they were given the order to destroy their guns and retreat, and as they dispersed some
went over to St. Vith (and made it out alive), whilst others, including the Wereth 11, went westwards over the fields and duly
ended up in the village.
They left two companies, including C Battery and Service Battery, behind for covering fire in support of the 106th Infantry
Division. On December 17 th C company was overrun and most of the soldiers were taken prisoner or killed; they suffered
heavy casualties, decimated to such a degree that they later join another artillery unit at Bastogne.
However, during that engagement 11 soldiers - 11 American soldiers - 11 young American men - 11 young African American
men, whose names now appear on the monument at Wereth, were separated from the main body, disorientated in the
Ardennes, without food and water, not knowing where the front line was, not knowing where the enemy was going to be, not
knowing where the Allied lines were - so they decided that they are going to try and make their way back as best they could.
Those men were:
Curtis ADAMS
Mager BRADLEY
George DAVIS
Thomas FORTE
Robert GREEN
Jim LEATHERWOOD
Nathaniel MOSS
G.W. MOTEN
W.M. PRITCHETT
James STEWART
Due TURNER
Eventually, after 6 or 7 hours of walking through freezing snow and darkened forest
they came across the village at Wereth. Because this village is on the border with
Belgium and Germany, it has an unusual history of changing allegiance from
Germany to Belgium and so on (having been repatriated after WW1) and living
within the village at that time were only nine families. Three of those families had
strong loyalties to the German armies; in fact one of the local women, a young
mother, was married to a SS soldier.
Fortunately for our 11 heroes, they come across a farmhouse; they knocked on the
door and they asked for shelter from the freezing cold. The friendly farmer, Mathias
Langer and his wife Maria, (co-incidentally the parents of 11 children) welcomed
them in -a very dangerous thing to do during the war, especially on such a battle
ground as the Ardennes, especially as they were American, and especially because
they were African Americans.
The farmer gave them hot coffee, warm bread and butter, served upon his large
family-sized dinner table, and they soon felt safe there, despite only having two
rifles between them. But someone in the village had clearly seen them arrive, and
had not seen them leave the farmhouse. It is thought that the wife of the SS Nazi
officer reported the “suspicious” activity at the farmhouse to a local patrol, who sent
a unit to the farmhouse to round up the soldiers.
The Germans, a four-man SS patrol, surrounded the house, knocked at the door, shouted for the soldiers to come out of the
house, and soon realized the soldiers of the 333rd were a beaten force, tired, with no weapons. The American soldiers put up
their hands in surrender to the German unit. They walked outside following their SS captors’ orders, where they were forced to
sit on the cold, wet ground (despite the farmer offering the suggestion that they be moved to the shed) before the SS soldiers
returned with their truck and forced the Americans to walk in front of them along the road to a trail some 70 meters or so from
the road.
After that the young soldiers were forced down to a spot at the edge of a farm field where the monument to them now stands.
The 11 young soldiers were forced to stand throughout the night, in the cold, and eventually all 11 of them were callously shot
dead, and they laid in the snow-covered field for some 6 or 7 weeks as more heavy snow came and covered their bodies. They
were not seen by locals (despite hearing shots ring out in the night) or by traffic going up and down the nearby road.
Eventually, in February the ground began to thaw, and the young son from the farm, Hermann Langer, aged 12 years, was
walking with his family to church, and spotted an arm sticking up through the snow.
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