Original subtitles

Lt. Colonel Ellis: May it please the court.

In order that the court may better understand

the presentation of the evidence in this case,

we will briefly outline the evidence

and what we expect it to show.

Hitler held a meeting of his army commanders

at Bad Nauheim on the 11th or 12th of December, 1944,

where he spoke for some three hours.

In this speech, Hitler stated that the decisive hour

for the German people had arrived.

This fight will be conducted stubbornly

with no regard for Allied prisoners of war

who will have to be shot if the situation makes it necessary.

All troops were warned that in the event of capture,

the existence of these orders

must not be made known to the enemy.

That night, the troops gathered around their campfires,

awaiting zero hour ...

(music playing)

Voiceover: By mid-December 1944,

the extreme western front in the Belgian Ardennes

had grown eerily quiet.

Many allied commanders called it the ghost front.

Supply problems in the wake of Operation Market Garden

had left this weakly-defended sector virtually on its own.

In a last desperate attempt to strike back at the Allies,

Hitler, against the advice of many of his senior commanders,

initiated his ultra-secret Ardennes offensive.

The operation would employ half a million men

in over 2,000 pieces of artillery.

Spearheading the offensive

were Hitler's hand-chosen and fanatical Waffen-SS,

which were ordered to spread a wave of terror and fright,

unrestricted by human inhibitions.

Squarely in the path

of Hitler's most experienced storm troopers,

just 6 kilometers from the border,

were men of the African-American 333rd field artillery battalion.

Fighting on the front lines since late June,

they were about to come face to face

with soldiers from the Third Reich,

the most ruthless regime the world has ever known.

(crowd cheering)

(Hitler shouting in German)

Nazi officer: Sieg heil!

(crowd chanting 'sieg heil')

(drums playing)

George: The SS Troopers were the cream of the crop.

They hated our guts.

Inferior, called you monkeys, whatever,

or you weren't as good as a monkey.

Most of them were blond hair and blue eyes.

They were the pure, pure people, so-called,

but I've seen SS Troopers shoot their own people down.

They didn't want to fight.

That's the way they were.

Fanatics.

(wind blowing)

(footsteps)

Nazi officer: (in German) Soldiers of the West front.

Your great hour has arrived.

Large attacking armies have started against the Anglo-Americans.

I do not have to tell you anything more than that.

You feel it yourself.

We gamble everything.

You carry with you the holy obligation

to give everything, to achieve things

beyond human possibilities.

For our Fatherland and our F█hrer.

Heil, Hitler

SS Trooper: Heil, Hitler.

(bombs launching)

(shouting in German)

Voiceover: Just before dawn,

the morning of 16 December 1944,

Adolf Hitler's Ardennes Offensive swung the full might

of the German war machine against

unsuspecting British and American troops.

(wailing sounds)

Soldier: What the!

Voiceover: In those pre-dawn hours of the 16th,

observers from the 333rd field artillery battalion

were the first to report German artillery engagement.

Soldier: King, this is King Charlie three.

Got heavy artillery to our front.

Repeat, heavy concentrated enemy artillery to our front,

and a hell of a lot of it!

Voiceover: The Germans were throwing everything they had

at the lightly-defended American lines.

Five-tubed Nebelwerfer batteries blasted

high explosive rockets 8,500 yards across the border.

Soldiers called the terrorizing sound they made

"Screaming Mimis".

(rockets launching, making wailing sounds)

(loud boom)

(loud boom)

But their most devastating weapon was the 88 gun

Nazi soldier: Fire!

(loud booms)

Voiceover: With a range of well over 16,000 yards.

(boom)

George: The eighty-eight,

that was the baddest weapon in Germany.

You didn't have to see it.

You heard it and felt it.

They used it for anti-personnel,

anti-tank, anti-everything.

They didn't miss much with it.

Voiceover: Americans trapped by thousands

of falling 88 shells had almost no chance.

Soldier: Keep your head low!

(bombs exploding)

(man screams)

Soldier: Get over here!

(explosion)

Voiceover: Today, four men,

including descendents of the 333rd,

have come to the Ardennes to honor

the Americans who fought in this place.

They are led by executive producer, Joseph Small.

Joseph: The 333rd, I have read several accounts,

were considered one of the best field arterial battalions

in the Army in Europe during the war.

Voiceover: The 333rd field artillery battalion

was one of nine all African-American field artillery battalions

deployed to the European theater of operations

in World War II.

Their wartime service began at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma,

in March 1943, under the command

of Colonel Harmon S. Kelsey.

George: First time I saw Kelsey

was in Camp Gruber, Oklahoma,

and he made his little speech,

and the only way you get out of this outfit is die out of it.

There's no transfers.

You had one street where you were allowed to walk on,

and that was it.

As a black soldier in the United States Army,

you wasn't as good as a dog,

especially in the South.

I was sitting on a barrack step,

reading a comic book,

and a state-side officer come by,

told me to cut the grass.

I stood up slowly and told him

that as a non-commissioned officer,

I'm not required to do manual labor.

You can put me in charge of a detail,

but I'm not gonna cut that grass.

He hollered, "Jail that nigger!"

There I go.

Then, them MPs dropped out of the sky from somewhere.

Voiceover: Serving under Kelsey

was Captain William McLeod,

who established a special relationship with the men.

George: Shortly after we got to Camp Gruber,

there was a lot of grumbling about, you know,

the guys wanting to kick his butt.

He called the company together and says,

"Anybody that wants to fight me,

"I'll take off my shirt, you take off yours,

"and we'll have a go at it, man to man.

"If you beat me, I'll shake your hand.

"If I beat you, I expect you to shake my hand,

"and it's off the record."

Nobody made another sound.

That's when I guess I fell in love with my captain.

Voiceover: The 333rd were issued the 155mm howitzer M1,

one of the most accurate pieces of artillery

made during the Second World War.

George: They'd do things with them guns

that other outfits couldn't with the same gun.

Voiceover: Once the 333rd arrived in France,

they quickly gained a reputation for their deadly accuracy.

During the battle of La Haye du Puits,

the 82nd airborne struggling with a Tiger tank,

called on the 333rd to take it out.

Battery C fired 4 rounds from 4 guns.

(rockets launching)

(explosions)

Two of the shells were direct hits on the tank.

The distance from Battery C's guns to the Tiger tank

was 9 miles.

George: They used to write things on the shells

detrimental to Mr. Hitler.

(laughs)

But, you know, that's the way you get after a while.

Once you hit them beaches

and you get out of that cold water of the English Channel,

you're a different person.

It's kill or be killed.

You know this.

Voiceover: A company executive producer,

Joseph Small, at the 333rd's former Battery C location

in Schoenberg, Belgium, is Robert Hudson,

whose father fought in the 333rd.

Joseph: Your dad was here,

probably having his morning coffee, his breakfast,

and why don't you tell me what your dad shared with you

about that fateful morning.

Robert H.: My dad was 24 years old.

He's from St. Louis, Missouri.

I think coming over here might have been

his first time out of town,

let alone out of the country.

He said that all the armored cover had been moved

and they were awakened by trees falling,

the earth rumbling,

and they knew they were in trouble.

Voiceover: Hundreds of thousands of German troops

along with tanks, half-tracks and artillery

streamed across the border.

Leading the main effort was the 6th Panzer Army,

commanded by one of Germany's most decorated soldiers,

World War I and Russian front veteran,

General Sepp Dietrich.

Hitler's former bodyguard,

Dietrich was despised by most of the higher officer class

who thought he had no great intelligence,

but he had a hard-won reputation for bravery,

and was known as a brutal commander.

His arduous assignment was to move his divisions

across the mountainous Schnee Eifel region.

Once through, they would do battle

in the towns of Schoenberg and St. Vith.

Supporting the 6th Panzer Army

was the fearsome 1st SS division,

which included Colonel Max Hansen's

Panzer grenadier regiment,

followed by Major Gustav Knittel's reconnaissance battalion.

They followed the path cut by Colonel Joachim Peiper,

who was greatly admired by Hitler for his fanaticism.

He was a charismatic leader

who inspired fierce loyalty in his men.

His orders were simple.

Move as rapidly as possible to the Meuse River,

and take no prisoners.

By daybreak on the 17th,

General Sepp Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army

reached the 333rd's position at Schoenberg, Belgium.

Robert H.: They had been shelled for the better part of 2 days,

so they had no sleep, no food,

and they were just basically told to make a stand here.

No better place to die.

Voiceover: Battery C, forward-most exposed,

had entered its 2nd day of continuous combat.

Soldier: Counter-battery, fire.

Shell HE, charge 5, fuse quick!

Voiceover: Face deflection right, 2 9 5 S I 3 0 2.

Soldier: Number 2 1 round, elevation 3 7 1.

Soldier: Round ready, sir!

Soldier: Fire!

(loud boom)

Fire!

(loud boom)

Voiceover: 900 meters to their left,

the Volksgrenadier still undetected by Battery C

had the Americans in their sights.

They planned a flanking move with their armor,

mortars, and machine guns to encircle the battery

and take out the guns.

(loud bangs)

(shouting in German)

(rockets launching)

Soldier: Incoming!

(explosions)

(machine guns firing)

(loud explosions)

(screams)

Voiceover: Battery C, which had been ordered

to stay behind and provide covering fire

for the advancing 106th infantry

had no choice but to stand and fight.

(tank rolling closer)

(loud boom)

Battalion commander, Harmon Kelsey, returned from HQ

to Battery C to evacuate as many men as he could

onto three trucks,

leaving behind Captain McLeod and just a few men.

George: The rest of the outfit tried to pull out to safety.

We had to stay behind.

We fired until we ran out of ammunition.

Can't kill but just so many with trench knives,

and they had, I'd say the Germans had to walk over

piles of their dead to get to us.

Voiceover: Hitler's strategy for success in the offensive

hinged on two main assumptions.

First, that the poor weather would ground

Allied fighter planes and allow his troops

to penetrate the Allied line quickly,

and second, that American defenses would crumble

under the weight of his more than 25 divisions.

It would be his last gamble of the war.

(loud boom)

Joseph: Mortars were coming in.

Right back here was their ammunition depot,

and a mortar came in and landed right in the middle of it.

(loud bang)

It didn't blow up, for some reason.

When I spoke with Sergeant Willie Alfonso down in Alabama,

he said that's the reason he's alive today.

(rapid gunshots)

(bullets flying)

(gunshots continue)

The 333rd Battery C was located here.

Soldier: Bring him! Don't leave him there!

Joseph: And instead of fleeing,

Soldier: Keep your head low!

Joseph: They manned their guns.

Soldier: This way, in the hole!

Joseph: And manned whatever rifles they had.

Soldier: Over here!

Joseph: And took them on,

and made a heroic stand on this very spot.

Soldier: Stay on the line, grab that rifle!

(gun shots)

Keep your head low!

(rapid gunshots)

(machine gunfire)

(gunshot)

(reloading rifle)

(machine gun fires)

I don't got enough ammo!

(gun shots)

(rapid gunshots)

(cocks rifle)

(gunshot)

(bullet flies by)

(gunshot)

Got him!

(gunshots continue)

(man shouts)

Aah!

George: That's a hard thing to do

when a man's got a rifle coming at you,

and you know all you've got is a trench knife.

Well, I got a couple,

and some of the other guys got a couple of them.

That was the least of my thoughts, being captured.

Killed, yes. Captured, no.

I think the real reason why McLeod surrendered

was to save lives

because there was nothing else he could do.

We could have all died, just fought with what we had

hand-to-hand combat until every man was killed,

but he didn't want that.

He wanted to try to save as many lives as he could,

and that's what he did by surrendering.

(coughing)

Voiceover: Captain McLeod and the men who could walk

were taken prisoner.

The wounded were not.

(gunshot)

On the spot, where the 333rd made their heroic stand,

descendant Robert Deshay recalls the anguish

his father carried throughout his lifetime.

Robert D.: I think our father passed

thinking of himself as a failure.

Regardless of the heroic stand that he made here that day,

I think because of the men, the friends,

the connectedness.

He was a very people-oriented person.

It was very important for him to stand together

with his comrades in arms

in the face of the German onslaught.

Robert H.: These guys put their country first

at a time when perhaps the country didn't put them first.

All these guys were friends.

They mostly came from the South,

many of them knew each other for some time.

They fought for their country.

They fought bravely.

They delayed the Germans to help us

turn the tide of the war.

George: I heard that most of the outfit

we were supporting, the 106th Infantry Division

surrendered without firing a shot.

I can believe it

because they were nothing but cooks, clerks,

and they knew nothing about combat.

When we first saw some of them, their shoes were shined,

pants with creases in them, neckties on,

you don't fight a war like this.

You aren't a SS trooper.

The SS troopers,

they're the ones that dressed all up

in fancy uniforms and everything.

When I first saw them,

we thought the war was over.

Hey, pass the word.

We're going home!

(laughs)

It's all over!

Yeah, it was all over, all right.

All of us that were left alive,

they moved us out on the road

and started walking.

(trumpet music)

(video narrated in German)

Voiceover: In this German propaganda footage,

American POWs of the 333rd field artillery battalion

are herded east towards an uncertain fate.

Many could only imagine the horrors that awaited them.

Among those prisoners

was a stubborn staff sergeant, George Shomo.

George: I saw them when they were taking the pictures.

That was propaganda,

especially when they captured black troops.

They parade you all through these little towns,

and like I said, the die hard Germans were beatin' ya,

and you couldn't do nothing about it.

You'd just keep walking and look straight ahead.

That's all.

Voiceover: The residents of Schoenberg,

including Joseph Bach, just a boy at the time,

witnessed the American surrender.

Joseph: Yes, out there.

There is an old heavy fir tree standing.

That has lived through the whole war.

They came all down from there,

and when they came out of that forest up there,

in front was one with a white flank.

They took up their steel helmets

and you can see it goes down a hill up there

from that street.

So the helmets came rolling down the hill,

one after the other,

came down that hill.

I would say 500 to 600 Americans

were standing on the meadow.

That was a long line along the street.

We were always running through that line.

they were laughing,

and when they began to take out those chocolate bars

out of their bags.

That's what we were excited about as children,

and then mid-day, at around 1 PM,

the whole line was going up there to Manderfeld,

to Germany, probably going into confinement or captivity.

Not far from where we were positioned on top of the hill,

there were Americans on one side and behind us,

and at that time, we saw an American soldier

who had fallen down the hill.

He was wounded.

He was lying down the bottom of the hill

where the brook was.

He was lying half in the water.

There was a woman who was kneeling

next to the American soldier,

and she said the soldier was badly wounded and dying.

She was wiping his face with water from the stream.

The German SS troops who were there

started to shout at the woman

that she shouldn't be touching the soldier.

The woman got mad

and started to scream at the SS troops,

that they should be ashamed of themselves,

that she had to take care of the soldier.

Voiceover: Although combat was over for Captian McLeod

and the men left behind to hold Battery C's position,

Colonel Kelsey still had hope

as he raced his rescued men back towards St. Vith.

He did not realize, however,

that the Germans had already pushed past him.

(shouting in German)

The convoy was surrounded on the Schoenberg Road,

and the men were forced to surrender.

Kelsey's men were turned around

and pointed in the direction

of other American prisoner columns

headed back towards Germany.

(airplane flying)

Joseph: Then the planes came again nearby.

One of them took out a carbine

and shot at the American plane.

One of the colonels saw that and went to him,

and told him, "10 minutes and you will be ready to travel,

"and you can come with us."

The Germans were at Crombach behind St. Vith.

"You come along.

"I want to see you here in 10 minutes.

"You can shoot down there to your heart's content."

And he came back.

He had to go into the car with them,

and they took off with him.

(airplane flying)

The American P-47s continued to pound

the German columns, which included American POWs.

One plane came upon the column with Kelsey's men.

(shouting in German)

(gun shots)

In the chaos and confusion,

several of the prisoners escaped.

Before long, they met up with other American escapees,

and the group headed northward,

straight into the path of a rapidly-advancing patrol

from Gustav Knittel's first SS reconnaissance battalion.

These soldiers would become known as the Wereth 11.

(truck drives past)

(distant bell rings)

Joseph: I came through this area a couple years ago,

following in the footsteps in my Uncle Bill Nahari,

who fought here with the 5th Infantry Division,

and I literally stumbled across the story of the Wereth 11.

Really turned my life upside down and fascinated me,

so I started doing all the research I could do on it,

and find out everything that I could.

Voiceover: The Wereth 11 included

Private Curtis Adams of South Carolina,

Technical Sergeant James Aubrey Stewart

of Piedmont, West Virginia,

and Private First Class George Davis,

of Bessemer, Alabama.

Davis was drafted in 1942 at the age of 24.

An only son, he was known as 'Little Georgie' around town

due to his 5'5" in stature.

(bell rings)

He attended a Julius Rosenwald black school

set up by northern philanthropist to help educate

African-Americans during the Great Depression,

and was popular amongst his peers,

especially the women.

James Aubrey Stewart,

one of the oldest of the Wereth 11 at 38,

shared the same birthplace as Harvard professor

Henry Lewis Gates, Jr., Piedmont, West Virginia.

Stewart was the first black employee

of Westvaco paper mill,

where he worked as a brick layer and a carpenter.

He also excelled in athletics as a pitcher

for the all-Black Piedmont Giants baseball team.

Around town, he was regarded as kind and gentle.

Private Curtis Adams was an 8-month newlywed

when he was drafted and sent to Fort Jackson

in Columbia, South Carolina.

Moving on to Camp Gruber, Oklahoma,

Curtis was surprised shortly before he shipped out

to see his wife [Katherine] arrive on a greyhound bus

to show him his new son, Jesse.

Robert H.: I had the extreme pleasure of meeting Jesse Adams,

the son of Curtis Adams, about two weeks ago.

He was only 2 years old when his dad died.

Here's a man 68 years old,

knew virtually nothing about his dad,

and to be able to talk to him about how his dad was a hero

and talk to him about the recognition

that he was going to get

really created a bond with this gentleman

that I'll have the rest of my life.

really created a bond with this gentleman

Just to see him smile.

My dad made it.

He was a prisoner of war.

He was shot twice,

but he came back.

He put me through college.

He put me through grad school.

These guys made the ultimate sacrifice,

and they provided a better life for all of us,

and we've got to do everything we can

to make sure they get the recognition that they deserve.

Voiceover: The other men comprising the Wereth 11

mainly hailed from the rural South,

including Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas.

Joseph Small along with Robert Hudson and Robert Deshay

have made the trip to Belgium to retrace the 10-mile journey

the Wereth 11 took in their flight to freedom.

As the men made their way northwest,

American POWs were beginning to be brutalized.

George: I found out one thing about the human body.

You can take just so much, then everything blacks out.

Mother Nature takes over,

and they could beat you 'til hell froze over,

and you wouldn't feel it.

I spent the night in Nuremberg stadium

underneath a great big swastika

that you've seen in pictures.

That's where we slept on the snow on the ground.

They used to call us niggers and stuff like that,

but this is stuff that I had heard in the South

way before I went overseas.

My shoulder's messed up right now

from an SS trooper's rifle.

He asked me questions,

and I kept saying my name and my serial number,

which under the Geneva convention,

that's what you're supposed to do.

Name, rank, and serial number.

He swore because I was a sergeant,

that I knew more, or knew a whole lot of information

that they could use.

I didn't know anymore than they did

so he hit me with a rifle butt and knocked me down.

I got up and I laughed at him.

I got hit again.

Erwin: Okay.

We are here now on the other side of the Our River,

on the other side of Schoenberg,

and this is the way the 11 men went through.

Joseph: Well, I just got a feel for what the men endured.

I'm wearing this World War II era gear,

and I'm hot, I'm winded,

and these guys were out here in the elements,

and to come up that hill and not really have

a sense of direction,

and just going through these woods alone,

you really start to feel for them.

Voiceover: The weather conditions

the Wereth 11 endured were brutal.

The temperatures kept dropping,

and it began to sleet.

The Battle of the Bulge itself would be fought

during one of the coldest European winters on record.

Hands and feet became frostbitten,

and everything from the water in canteens

to the water-cooled machine guns froze.

Men were lucky if they had a single blanket

to share between three men in a foxhole.

For many, staying alive became secondary

to staying warm.

Erwin: This is the halfway point

between the village of Schoenberg and Wereth.

To the right, there's the village of Herresbach,

and this is also a reason that the soldiers

had to take this road

because they were convinced

that was already taken by the Germans.

Joseph: It was the largest battle fought

in the history of modern warfare.

German unit here, an American unit here,

fighting it out with tanks and artillery.

(drums)

It was just so brutal

and the 333rd was a big part of it.

Specifically, the 11 men that just walked down this road

to Wereth, which is where we're going to go to next.

Voiceover: Herman Langer was just 12 years old

when the 11 men arrived at his family farm in Wereth.

Herman: That was on 17 December

in the afternoon at 4 o'clock

when the 11 Black American soldiers

came down from the woods towards our house.

They were wet and cold and were hungry,

and they asked if they could possibly have something to eat,

upon which they came into our house,

where my mother and my sister

put bread and water on the table for each of them

so they could eat something.

My father tried to explain to them

that they should quickly take the path behind the house

to look towards St. Vith,

but my father was unable to make them understand.

He tried to point them in that direction

so that they would be in safety.

A woman whose husband also was an SS man met the SS.

She must have told him, one tells oneself,

there are still black people.

Then, suddenly, the SS vehicle drove up

and stopped directly in front of the house.

(shouting in German)

(cocks gun)

I cannot say whether they carried the white flag

when they had gone out,

but when they went out,

they had their hands up and walked out.

They never wanted to get into a shoot out.

(SS officer shouts in German)

It was wet and cold there.

They were freezing and trembling from the cold.

So my father suggested to the chief of the SS group

that they should let the prisoners go in the shed

because we had a shed to shelter for wagons and carts

and you could have easily put the prisoners in there

because it was sleeping.

One soldier said that they would get warm again

walking in front of the car.

When it started to get dark,

they set off, and they had to walk in front of the cars

down to here, and then to this spot.

Voiceover: This part of Belgium before World War I

was still a part of Germany.

Herman Langer's father had taken a great risk

sheltering the American soldiers.

Three of the nine homes in the town at the time

were still loyal to Germany.

The 11 men were led down a path

and told to sit on a wet slope in a pasture and wait.

(music playing)

(car engine)

(footsteps in snow)

(gun clicks)

George: These were guys out of my outfit.

They just mutilated them and murdered them

and left them laying out there in the field.

When spring thaw come, they found their bodies.

Herman: I believe that we went to church,

which was, I think, on second February,

and we saw the bodies that had been left there.

Voiceover: Six weeks after the American soldiers

were brutalized and killed,

word reached command HQ that a grizzly scene

had been discovered at Wereth.

A war crime investigative team,

including a surgeon, an army photographer,

quickly descended upon the sight.

Soldier: That man appears to have been allowed

to dress his own wounds.

Voiceover: It was clear that all had been

savagely tortured before they died.

The men's contorted faces exhibited

multiple face and jaw fractures.

Fingers were severed and legs were broken.

Bayonet wounds were present through the eye sockets.

Soldier: War crime does not begin

to be a strong enough term for this.

Voiceover: By the time the bodies were discovered

in mid-February 1945 at Wereth,

the Battle of the Bulge was over.

After the rapid German gains in mid-December,

the enemy offensive bogged down.

(explosions)

Stiff American resistance by various isolated units

had given time for the US 1st and 9th Armies

to shift against the German northern flank.

The British had sent reserves to secure the Meuse River

and Patton's 3rd Army shut down

the enemy attack in the south.

The cost of victory was heavy.

Nearly 50,000 American soldiers were casualties,

including 19,000 dead.

No headlines had trumpeted the battle's end.

The Allies continued their march into Germany

and for American prisoners of war,

their nightmare was finally over.

Moosburg, Germany.

That's where I was finally liberated at in that camp.

That was the last camp I was in.

We saw the German guards pulling off their uniforms

and this was something.

The American troops never done that.

You could be shot as a spy

if you've got civilian clothes underneath your uniform.

These cats would pull off them old baggy ...

I was wondering why that German soldiers' uniforms

were so baggy.

Now I knew,

because they had civilian clothes underneath them.

Patton come through and said we were out of the war.

As soon as the weather permitted,

we'd be flown back to France.

Herman: I had left here in 1961.

I now live 65 kilometers [west].

When I came up here,

it always bothered me that there was nothing to remember

what we have seen years before,

and 50 years later, I was retired.

I had more time, and I had the idea to build up

a three-meter high wooden cross here.

I had the wood cut already,

but my father-in-law's grave

who had died in 1939 and had to be cleared away in 1994.

I had the stone cross available,

and I thought stone lasts longer than wood,

and so I did this instead.

Anne-Marie No█l-Simon is in charge of

the Wereth Memorial in Belgium.

Anne-Marie: This is Ada Rikken, our president.

For Ada it was really a big important thing,

and overall she talked about the Wereth Memorial,

and the US Memorial Wereth was her baby.

In 2002, we have no money to realize the memorial,

and Louis, Jonckeau, Ada, and myself,

we put money on the table to buy the ground,

to pay the land surveyor, to pay the notary

and to pay all that we must pay.

It was with the help of Ada's friend,

Norman Lichtenfeld in America,

and with the help of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center

in Germany

and the ROCKS Corporation, European Chapter,

that finally we can have 50,000 euros to make this small

but fine, I think, Memorial.

(serene music)

Joseph: Today, we're here in Wereth, Belgium,

to honor 11 members of the 333rd field artillery battalion

that were brutally massacred on this site

December 17, 1944.

The names of the 11 members are as follows:

Technical Sergeant William Edward Pritchett.

Technical Sergeant James A. Stewart.

Staff Sergeant Thomas J. Forte.

Corporal Mager Bradley.

Private First Class George Davis.

Private First Class James Leatherwood.

Private First Class George W. Moten.

Private First Class Due W. Turner.

Private Curtis Adams.

Private Robert Green.

Private Nathanial Moss.

I was really moved and saddened by this story.

I thought that the men's dignity was taken from them,

and that really bothered me.

I set out on a mission to make sure

the citizens of America

and the citizens of Europe,

they knew what happened to those 11 men,

and make sure they knew the contribution

of the 333rd field artillery battalion during World War II.

(sung) Amazing Grace,

(sung) how sweet the sound

(sung) that saved a wretch like me.

(sung) Oh, Lord.

(sung) I once was lost

(sung) but now I'm found.

(sung) Was, I was blind, but now I see.

Voiceover: The murder of the 11 Americans at Wereth

was not the only war crime committed

on December 17, 1944.

Just 25 kilometers to the west, in Malmedy,

in a more well-known atrocity,

90 American soldiers of the 285th Field Artillery

Observation Battalion were mowed down

by men of the Kampfgruppe Peiper,

part of the 1st SS division.

And the very next day, December 18, 1944,

the same SS unit of Kampfgruppe Peiper

systematically executed 130 Belgian civilians

in the village of Stavelot.

Charged with sheltering American soldiers,

67 men, 47 women, and 23 children were brutally executed.

Lt. Col Ellis: Is that your handwriting?

Woman: (translates in German) Yes.

Lt. Col Ellis: That's your signature?

Woman: (translates into German) Yes.

Voiceover: These war crimes committed by

Joachim Peiper's battle group were prosecuted vigorously

at Dachau by lead investigator Colonel Burton Ellis.

Lt. Col Ellis: The 1st SS Panzer regiment,

commanded by the accused,

Peiper passed on this order to subordinate commands

in words and substance to the effect that,

"This fight will be conducted stubbornly

"with no regard for Allied prisoners of war,

"who will have to be shot if the situation

"makes it necessary and compellative."

Voiceover: In what became known as

the Malmady Massacre Trial,

Joachim Peiper, Gustav Knittel, and Sepp Dietrich

were found guilty of war crimes.

Officer: It is a bloody record indeed

that the first SS Panzer regiment set for itself

in this one short week.

These comrades all would have been alive today

if it had not been for the 1st SS Panzer regiment,

and they must not have died in vain.

Judge: It is the members present at the time

the vote was taken concurring,

sentences you to life imprisonment.

Sentences you to life imprisonment.

Present at the time the vote was taken concurring,

sentences you to death by hanging.

Voiceover: All sentences, including Peiper's death sentence

were later reduced to shortened prison terms.

The last Nazi war criminal to leave prison

was Joachim Peiper in late December 1956.

Although an investigation was launched

into the massacre at Wereth,

it was closed administratively on February 19, 1947.

In the final Congressional report on the massacres

committed by the 1st SS division,

all locations of war crimes committed in Belgium

during the Battle of the Bulge,

along with the approximate number of persons murdered,

both civilian and military were listed.

Wereth was absent.

Through the efforts of Herman Langer

and other private citizens in Belgium and the United States,

the Wereth Memorial site survives as hallowed ground,

preserved in lasting remembrance

to the final acts of courage of the 11 men

of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion.

It is the only memorial in Europe dedicated to the service

of African-American GIs in World War II.

(sung) I see the glory, the promised land.

(sung) Promised land.

(sung) Ooh, promised land.

(sung) Seen the promised land.

(sung) Seen the promised land.

(sung) I've seen the promised land.

(music plays)

George: Twenty-one days at sea on the Liberty ship

coming home in a storm

with rivers popping up out the ship and everything,

then you get on land, you see German POWs

dressed in nice uniforms, all clean and everything,

well fed, and they're calling us names.

We came in at Fort Devens, Massachusetts,

and they had to call out the National Guard and everybody

to keep us from killing them German POWs.

I came out of the army with nothing

but the clothes on my back.

That's what happened to black troops down there.

They hand me a train ticket,

my separation papers, that was it,

and I rode in a washroom from Alabama to Washington D.C.

There was a whole empty car in the back of where,

you know, where I was supposed to be sitting at.

They wouldn't let us go in there.

It was just four of us rode in the restroom.

One of the guys was a Lieutenant,

but I didn't mind because after combat and everything,

hell, that was paradise riding somewhere in the train.

I just made the best of it.