I only recently joined this site and am amazed at the vast amount of info I am picking up. I stumbled onto this thread and it peaked my interest as I have known for some time about one massacre of black soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. And, coincidentally, a newspaper article was printed last December in our Tulsa World newspaper. Here's the article....it's easier to post it than it is to give an overview! I would point out the paragraph talking about the autopsy report on the bodies....
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article. ... rchive=yes
FORT GIBSON — A tombstone can hardly tell the story of one person's life.
If it could, what would it say for just one day of Mager Bradley's life, the day he was murdered by the Nazi SS at the outset of the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium 65 years ago?
Bradley is buried in section 6, grave 2698-E at the Fort Gibson National Cemetery.
Chiseled into white stone, his gravestone simply reads: Mager Bradley, Mississippi, Cpl, Field Arty, World War II, April 21 1917, December 17 1944.
Bradley was a corporal with the all-black 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, which was stationed and trained at nearby Camp Gruber before heading to Europe in 1944.
At 27 years old, he and 10 other black soldiers with the battalion were captured by Germans with the 1st SS Panzer Division at Wereth, a small farming village in southeastern Belgium.
On that frigid Dec. 17, the 11 were marched to a frozen field, where they were butchered by troops bent on amusing themselves with the agony of others.
Earlier that day, 10 miles northwest of Wereth, at a crossroad near Malmedy, the most infamous massacre during the Battle of the Bulge occurred. More than 80 U.S. troops were captured by the same Nazi division and executed in an open field.
But unlike at Malmedy, where the American troops were gunned down, the "Wereth 11," as they have come to be known, were maimed and tortured to death.
An autopsy report on the 11 is ghastly: broken legs and arms, jaws shattered, fingers severed, bayonet wounds to the face and body and bullet wounds designed to inflict anguish rather than death.
Unlike at Malmedy, where those responsible were brought to justice, the Germans who perpetrated the horror at Wereth were never found.
The U.S. military investigated the Wereth killings but filed away its investigation in 1948. The file remained buried for five decades.
"It is a shame on our government for not performing the same as it did for Malmedy," said Christian de Marcken, a Belgian-American living in Paxton, Mass.
De Marcken, who has chronicled the Wereth massacre, is convinced not enough effort was put into capturing the SS troops responsible.
What de Marcken finds shameful is none of the 11 received any medals until recent years.
De Marcken has visited Wereth and talked to many people who remember that night. He credits the Belgians with drawing American attention to the massacre.
A granite memorial to the 11 — said to be the only memorial in Europe to the sacrifices of black American troops — was erected, largely due to the efforts of Belgians.
That memorial was formally recognized in a 2004 ceremony attended by U.S. troops. Every year, American troops commemorate the Wereth 11 at that spot, de Marcken said.
De Marcken said it was Herman Langer, whose parents tried to shelter the 11, who started the drive in 1994 to create a monument.
It was on the second day of the Battle of the Bulge when the 11, faced with an onslaught of Germans, became separated from their unit and found their way to the home of Mathius and Maria Langer, de Marcken said.
The couple took the shivering soldiers into their home and were preparing to feed them when Nazi troops arrived after being alerted by a German sympathizer.
The 11 were forced outside and were made to sit on an icy road for two hours before they were marched into a field and murdered.
Their bodies, covered by ensuing snowstorms, remained at that spot for two months until villagers notified the U.S. Army about the massacre, de Marcken said.
In a 2008 trip to Wereth, de Marcken said, he met with a tearful Tina Heinrich-Langer, who was a teenager when the 11 came to her family's home.
The woman told him the soldiers offered the family a bar of soap, something the family hadn't seen since the start of the war.
"She was crying when she told me that," de Marcken said. "She cried because the family used the soap and now she doesn't have anything to connect her to those brave soldiers."
Seven of the dead are buried at the U.S. Military Cemetery at Henri-Chapelle, Liege, Belguim. The others were returned to the United States for burial.
Curiously, Bradley was not buried at Fort Gibson until Dec. 15, 1947 — three years after he was killed, according to cemetery records.
Dr. Norman Lichtenfeld of Mobile, Ala., has done extensive research into the massacre and noted that the 11 were buried in temporary graves in Europe until 1947, when their families were contacted about permanent burial options.
Not much is known about Bradley since none of his next of kin could be found in Mississippi or Oklahoma.
What is known is that he was a native of Bolivar County, Miss., and enlisted there in the Army in April 1941.
Muskogee County records show he was married in Muskogee on Dec. 2, 1943, to Eva Mae James, 20, of Okmulgee, while he was in training at Camp Gruber.
Lichtenfeld said it was Bradley's widow who opted for his burial in Oklahoma.