Battle of the Bulge Through a WWII Veteran's Eyes: George Ciampa

Documentary First, Episode 116 · with George Ciampa, WWII graves registration veteran, and co-host Jason Rugg · 58 minutes · May 26, 2021

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What was the Battle of the Bulge like for a WWII graves registration soldier?

From September 1944 into February 1945, George Ciampa’s 607th Graves Registration Company was dug in at Hombourg, Belgium, next to the village of Henri-Chapelle. When the Battle of the Bulge broke out in December, the men went onto the frozen battlefields to bring the dead back for burial. By the time they left for Germany, 17,300 Americans were buried in their temporary cemetery.

In Episode 116 of Documentary First, the second of five conversations with George, then 95, co-host Jason Rugg and Christian Taylor ask him what that winter was like. George describes a cold he puts at 30 degrees below zero, sleeping in a foxhole enclosure with his friend Tex, the farm boy who brought him a keg of warm milk, and the V-1 buzz bomb whose shrapnel landed at his feet. He talks about the Malmedy massacre, the Germans caught wearing American uniforms, and the Wereth 11, the 11 Black American soldiers whose story he told in his first film, Let Freedom Ring: The Lesson Is Priceless. He closes with the move to Eisenach, Germany, and why only about 40% of the Americans who died in Europe are buried there today.

The episode opens with Christian’s update on The Girl Who Wore Freedom: a deal with Delta, its release in Canada, an interview on WGN TV, and its two finalist spots at the GI Film Festival. She also introduces her next film, The Brave Dutch, about the Dutch resistance.

In this episode, you’ll learn

• How cold the winter of the Battle of the Bulge really was, and what the soldiers lacked
• How a temporary cemetery at Hombourg, next to Henri-Chapelle, grew to 17,300 graves
• How two soldiers lived and slept in a foxhole enclosure through a Belgian winter
• What it was like to live under V-1 buzz bombs, and the night George saw a V-2 rocket go up
• How a Belgian farm family and their son Joseph became lifelong friends
• How GIs used baseball and comic strip questions to catch Germans wearing American uniforms
• The story of the Wereth 11, and how George told it in his first film
• Why only about 40% of the Americans who died in Europe are buried there today

Questions and answers

What did graves registration units do during the Battle of the Bulge?

George Ciampa's 607th Graves Registration Company reached Hombourg, Belgium, next to the village of Henri-Chapelle, in September 1944 and stayed about four months. During the Battle of the Bulge, from December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945, the men went out onto the battlefields to pick up the bodies, which were frozen, and brought them back for burial. By the time the company left for Germany in February, 17,300 Americans were buried in its temporary cemetery.

How cold was the winter of the Battle of the Bulge?

George Ciampa says it was like 30 degrees below zero, and the soldiers did not have the clothing they should have had. He heard that 40,000 soldiers had frostbitten feet. Everyone who lived there, he says, called it the coldest winter they ever saw. On guard duty at night he stood for an hour with his back against the outhouse, banging his feet together to try to stay warm.

How did American soldiers catch Germans wearing American uniforms?

Around Christmas 1944, Germans dressed in American uniforms were behind the lines, so GIs challenged everybody with questions. George Ciampa says they asked about baseball, such as who Babe Ruth was or who played for St. Louis, and about comics like Blondie and her husband Dagwood. Three of these men were caught in his company's area and executed. George says he was not involved and did not see them.

What was the Wereth 11?

The Wereth 11 were 11 Black American artillery soldiers who withdrew during the Battle of the Bulge with one rifle and no food. In Wereth, a little village on the border of Belgium and Germany, a family took them in, warmed them and fed them, but someone turned them in, and SS troops brutalized and killed them. George Ciampa's company buried them in its temporary cemetery, and he told their story in his first film, Let Freedom Ring: The Lesson Is Priceless. A ceremony is held for them every September.

Why are only about 40% of the Americans who died in Europe in WWII buried there?

George Ciampa explains that after the war the next of kin could have a soldier's remains sent home to any cemetery they wanted, at no cost, or leave them in Europe. About 60 percent went home. So a permanent cemetery like the one in Normandy, with almost 10,000 graves, represents only 40 percent of those who were buried there in temporary cemeteries.

Chapters

• 0:00 Film Update: Canada, Delta and The Brave Dutch
• 7:23 The Coldest Winter and 17,300 Graves
• 13:06 A Belgian Farm Family and a Keg of Warm Milk
• 18:49 Strafed on Christmas Day, and a Friend Named Tex
• 20:56 Life in a Foxhole Under the Buzz Bombs
• 27:03 Four Months on the Frozen Battlefields
• 30:53 Malmedy and Germans in American Uniforms
• 38:41 The Wereth 11
• 41:44 Let Freedom Ring: The Lesson Is Priceless
• 47:04 Eisenach and the 40% Who Stayed
• 51:41 Next Time: Margot and a Jeep

About the guest

George Ciampa (1925-2024) was a World War II veteran and documentary filmmaker. He served with the 607th Graves Registration Company, which spent about four months at the temporary cemetery at Hombourg, next to Henri-Chapelle, Belgium, through the Battle of the Bulge before moving into Germany, where it ended the war at Eisenach. He later studied French in college and kept in touch with the Belgian families he met during the war. He made his first film, Let Freedom Ring: The Lesson Is Priceless, at 81, taking four young history teachers to meet people who had lost their freedom, and went on to make six films. After his first wife died in 1981 he raised his two children for 10 years, and he married Dottie in 1991. George Ciampa died on January 3, 2024, at the age of 98. Learn more about his work at Let Freedom Ring.

More from this series

This is the second of five Documentary First conversations with George Ciampa. Part 1 is He Buried the Fallen After D-Day: WWII Veteran George Ciampa, and Part 3 is The War Ends, Then Margot: George Ciampa's Road Home. Part 4 picks up with Margot again and his life after the war, and Part 5 covers his films. After his death, Christian remembered him in Goodbye, George: Remembering WWII Veteran George Ciampa. All of George's episodes are gathered on the George Ciampa, WWII veteran page.

About Documentary First

For people who make documentaries and people who love them. Discover how documentaries actually get made, paid for and seen with filmmaker Christian Taylor. Plus DocuView Deja View, where every guest recommends a documentary worth watching. One week, a long-form conversation about a guest's journey, projects and lessons; the next, The Deep Dive, Christian's short solo reflection on one idea from that conversation. Guests have included Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy. Christian directed the award-winning documentary The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Nearly 300 conversations. Listen Notes top 5% worldwide. 4.8 on Apple Podcasts. New episodes every week. Follow the show · About the podcast · Support the show on Patreon

Resources mentioned

• Let Freedom Ring, George Ciampa's website

Full transcript

Film Update: Canada, Delta and The Brave Dutch

Jason Rugg: Welcome back to Documentary First, an inside look at a first-time filmmaker's journey. I'm your host, Jason Rugg, filling in for Josh Lindsay, who's out sick today, and I'm joined as always by our first-time filmmaker herself, Christian Taylor. How you doing?

Christian Taylor: Appreciate it, Jason. I'm good. Thank you so much for being our backup quarterback in this situation.

Jason: Yeah, happy to do it. We have a special guest here today.

Christian: Yeah.

Jason: We're joined again by George Ciampa, who was with us last week.

Christian: Yeah, last week George was here and he gave us such an incredible story, we just knew we had to have him back. We ended off at the Battle of the Bulge, so after a film update we're gonna hear some more from George. George, we're really happy to have you here.

George Ciampa: Thank you.

Jason: Yeah. Christian, let's dive into this film update. I want to hear what's going on.

Christian: Oh my gosh, it's been such an exciting, crazy week. I don't even know where to begin. So we did, sort of in our newsletter, release that we had signed a deal with Delta, and that's just been super exciting among our donors, and we are thrilled about that. They have started fulfilling the distribution deliverables that Delta needs in order to get us on those planes by August, so that's great.

And then I got news yesterday, which you are hearing here first: we have had our official release in Canada. So yesterday The Girl Who Wore Freedom was added to the Shaw cable company video on demand platform. So if you're listening and you live in Canada, go and check out The Girl Who Wore Freedom on your TV sets. You can watch it for 6.99 in HD, that's Canadian dollars. You can also go on the Cineplex Store. If you have a subscription to the Cineplex Store, it's kind of like iTunes, we can be found there as well for 5.99. So it's a little cheaper if you go to the Cineplex Store than it is on Shaw cable company. But congratulations, Canada, you are now able to watch The Girl Who Wore Freedom.

Jason: That's incredible.

Christian: Yeah, I know, it's super exciting. And then we're going to be sharing that on social media in the next few days, and our soft launch for the United States is coming up in a few days as well. We're going to do presales on iTunes, so everybody just needs to be looking out on our social media for that, so you'll know when you can share with your friends and tell them to go buy a copy of The Girl Who Wore Freedom. So that was great. Yesterday I was on WGN TV. Did you see that?

Jason: So I saw the Twitter update just a little bit too late. So I was like, you were like, "I'm on in five," and it was like three hours ago for me, and I was like, I totally would have pulled that up. I can't believe I missed it.

Christian: Oh well, that's okay. Actually, I missed it too. I don't know what happened. I was watching WGN online and I think I must have had an old cached version. It was replaying old news, so I missed it. But fortunately they sent out a link and they're carrying the interview online on WGN, so there are links on Twitter and on Facebook and even LinkedIn if you want to catch that interview.

It's basically talking about our GI Film Festival debut, which is tonight. Of course, when everybody hears this it'll be a week late. And by next week we will know. We are a finalist in the best documentary category and we're a finalist in the first-time filmmaker category, and that award ceremony is on Sunday, so by next week we'll know. So that has just been an incredibly exciting thing.

The last thing I have to tell you is I am leaving this weekend to go meet a new director of photography, and I'm starting to interview for positions for The Brave Dutch. And I'm super excited about that because I realized what I'm gonna do is, as The Girl Who Wore Freedom begins to wind down and the next project, The Brave Dutch, begins to wind up, we are going to close Documentary First and start Documentary Second. So I haven't told you that yet, Jason, but now you know.

Jason: Is that officially what it's going to be called, Documentary Second?

Christian: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we might as well go with it, right? So that's what I've been thinking and dreaming about in regards to that, and we'll just kind of see how that goes. Also, new news on the Patreon front. I think we're going to be ready to launch our Patreon in the next week or two, and I'm so excited about this. We've now done the video, we've got all the tiers lined up, the levels, and the rewards for those tiers are super fun. So I think people will like those a lot. So keep an eye out on our social media for when we launch our Patreon page.

George: Well, that's awesome. What's the second documentary about?

Christian: Thank you, George, that's a wonderful question. So it's called The Brave Dutch, and it is the story of the Dutch resistance and how they helped our downed American airmen, British airmen, Canadian airmen, as well as the Jews and the underwater boys. Our particular story begins with John Lau, who was actually from my hometown of Laurel, Mississippi, and was shot down over occupied Holland in April of 1944. So John was kept alive for 11 months by the Dutch resistance, and when he got back to Paris he wrote a little book, an homage to the brave Dutch people. So that is what the next documentary is about.

George: Sounds good.

Christian: Yeah. So any questions, Jason?

Jason: No, I think I'm just excited to see what this next week brings. I'm excited to hear the update from next week, because it sounds like there's a lot of things that are going to be happening, like Patreon and award ceremonies and things within the next little bit here. So I'm excited to see what next week brings.

Christian: And our release. And if people are listening, don't forget, I'm going to be in Greenville, South Carolina, on D-Day, which is June 6th. We've got the Reedy Reels Film Festival coming up. I'm going to be there with David Chapman and a few other people from our team. Then we're going to drive to Beaufort, South Carolina, beautiful Beaufort, with the people of the Beaufort Film Society, and we are going to be doing a D-Day event. It's a fundraising event for the Beaufort Film Society. So if you are anywhere in the area, come and join us. You can stay at the Beaufort Inn, it's a wonderful little hotel there, and you can join us for those events on D-Day. We've got new D-Day merchandise in our store, some specially designed T-shirts that honor everything that went on on D-Day. It's the 77th anniversary, so go and check out our shop. And yeah, we got a lot of stuff coming up in the next two weeks.

Jason: You're super busy.

Christian: Yes, I am. I am super busy, but I have time to talk to you today.

The Coldest Winter and 17,300 Graves

Christian: George Ciampa, I had so much fun listening to your stories last week, and you got us all the way to the Battle of the Bulge, and then we just had to leave, and I've been on the edge of my seat to find out. I was told that the Battle of the Bulge was like the coldest winter in I don't know how long when you got there. And I always heard stories that you guys were not well supplied in terms of things that keep you warm. I mean, how did you stay warm during that time?

George: My girlfriend. No, I'm just kidding you. I hope I don't duplicate anything I talked about before, but the Battle of the Bulge, let me just tell you this in case you don't know, that was the largest land battle the US Army ever fought. And you're right, it was like 30 degrees below zero. It was a cold, cold weather winter, and we didn't have the clothing that we should have. And I heard that there were 40,000 soldiers that had frostbitten feet. So yeah, that battle went on from December 16, 1944, to January 25th, 1945.

So as bad as the invasion was, the Normandy invasion, and it was bad, I really don't know how many were killed there, because you hear different reports, and the thing is around 8,000 that were killed. I don't know why, but they don't have the exact figures. But I can tell you about the Battle of the Bulge. My company, the 607th Graves Registration Company, got to the area in September of 1944, and we were bivouacked in the area called Hombourg, H-O-M-B-O-U-R-G, Hombourg, which is right next to the little village of Henri-Chapelle.

So at Hombourg, where we had a temporary cemetery, before we left there we had 17,300 American heroes buried there. It was on a farm. They got the land from the farmers to have the temporary cemetery there. There's a lot of pictures of the temporary cemetery with initially just markers, and then after us came another graves registration company that put wood crosses, and you had a dog tag nailed on a wood cross and one on the body. But when we first got there, we were in a meadow, and we dug in, and we had a temporary latrine. I remember that latrine. You know what a latrine is?

Christian: I know what a latrine is, but why would it be memorable?

George: Because of the kind of latrine that it was, and it was really weird.

Christian: Do tell, now I'm curious.

George: Used for toilet paper, newspaper. But you know, there was a shortage of toilet paper during this pandemic. People were going crazy, and it kind of reminded me of us during the Battle of the Bulge. But the cemetery there, the permanent Henri-Chapelle cemetery, is called Henri-Chapelle because that's the next village. Hombourg is very, very small. Henri-Chapelle has a little church and a couple of stores. It's a very, very small village. So Henri, H-E-N-R-I, Chapelle, C-H-A-P-E-L-L-E. That permanent cemetery came to be in 1947, two years after the war.

So I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back to September '44. The weather was rain, rain, rain, cold, cold, cold. Trucks were getting stuck in the mud, having to pull them out with winches, tie it to a tree that you could find and pull yourself out of the hole that way. But it was miserable. And then it started snowing, and like everybody that lived there that is still alive could tell you, it was the coldest winter they ever saw. So in the middle I had my foxhole, and I remember we were only there, I think, for maybe two or three days, a very short time, and we thought we'd better move the heck out of there, because we didn't have any overhead shelter, any protection from the air. And so we moved into the adjacent woods.

A Belgian Farm Family and a Keg of Warm Milk

George: And so the day after we moved, they bombed our temporary cemetery. The craters are still there, and one of the big craters is right next to a farmhouse, and the Pooters lived in that farmhouse as a family. Well, there wasn't a family of 11 kids at that time, but eventually they were. And one of them was 15 years old, and he was the oldest, and that was Joseph. And he had two younger brothers, but I'll go into that in a bit. But Joseph was 15, I was 19.

And so he and another kid from another village, a much larger village, Aubel, A-U-B-L, used to come around where bodies were being buried, and we used to tell them, "Get the hell out of here, kid." And they remember those words even 50 years later. They remember those words, "Get the hell out of here, kid." Well anyway, one day I said, "Hey Joseph, can you bring me some milk?" "Oh, sure." So the next day, I'm still in the meadow by the way, before we got into the wooded area, there is a keg of milk right next to my foxhole. And I looked at it, there's almost hay in there, it's warm. "Don't you have any cold milk?" "No." I don't want this kind of milk.

But anyway, I'll never forget that. He never forgot that. He has died since. He died about three years ago, I think. But I saw him often after that, the years that we went back. Saw him and a couple of his brothers and sisters. We saw a lot of the family, but the mother and father we used to visit a lot while we were there. And you can remember the buzz bombs, because the Germans were launching the V-1 buzz bomb. It looks like a miniature airplane loaded with explosives, and they had thousands of those they were launching, and they were just hitting wherever. And in fact, I almost got hit by one of them. I have a piece of shrapnel that ended up right at my feet, a big piece of shrapnel. Took it home. But anyway.

Christian: Can I just ask you a couple of questions before we go on? So the story that you're telling here is remarkable, and it reminds me very much of the stories that I heard in France. Here we are in Belgium, and these American GIs and the people living there sort of find a way to help each other out. And I'm wondering, how did you communicate with them? Because in France it was challenging. How did you communicate "Get me some milk"? That's interesting.

George: There's ways of communicating if you have to. We used to go in the home of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Pooters, and sit and talk with them sometimes. And I don't know, I don't know sign language. It's a good question. I don't know how we communicated. Much later, in the army of occupation, I know how I communicated. I learned a little German through a girl there, and she learned a little English, but we both did pretty well. I mean, I learned how to interpret the song "You Are My Sunshine" in German.

And I'm laughing because I went to Hawaii with American Airlines and Gary's, and this was with a bunch of Pearl Harbor veterans. And after we got there, I got to meet the captain and the co-captain, Nancy Milner, a female co-pilot.

Christian: You have a remarkable, amazing memory to remember names.

George: Yeah, just sometimes. But you know what, I'm still friends with them. But what made me think of that? And see, I get off on tangents all the time. You gotta bear with me on that. My wife gets on me about tangents. But I'll say, whenever I talk to people, none of them fall asleep. Kind of reminds me of Henry Kissinger's speech one time, when he said, "If I bore you, it's your fault." [Laughter]

Christian: You are not boring me, and I found your tangents interesting, so keep going.

George: All right. So anyway, Joseph, I said, he'd come to the cemetery, you would have to kick him away from there. Because as I said, when we left there we had 17,300, but this is before we had 17,300.

Strafed on Christmas Day, and a Friend Named Tex

George: It's early on, we're talking about December. We got strafed by a German plane, and luckily nobody got hit. Wonder why that happened on Christmas Day. But anyway, I woke up one day from my foxhole and I couldn't straighten up. At that point I was only 19, just early on, 19 years old. So I went on sick call. I got in the truck and went to the hospital, and the first thing that happened there was they had me see a psychologist, and he asked me how I would like the Army. And then he started asking me a bunch of stupid questions, and I just got pissed off at him and walked out, though I couldn't stand up erect when I went there. But the next day I was pretty good.

Because, you know, we were sleeping on the ground. I was sleeping with another guy, Tex. Tex was 24 years old when I was 19, and he was a character. He was always smoking cigars that he'd get from home. And so then somehow or other, he and others got their hands on cognac, and so he'd be drinking cognac and smoking a cigar. And pretty soon I started smoking his cigars, and pretty soon, unknowingly, he was trying to get me to quit smoking his cigars. So when I wasn't looking, he'd flip his ashes in my drink. And that never bothered me, but he told me that later, years ago. He was from Texas, and he was really a character. He was always laughing on the outside and crying on the inside, and everybody thought he was looking for a Section 8, because he'd walk around sometimes saying, "If you vote for me for mayor of this town, I promise you we'll have four houses on wheels."

Life in a Foxhole Under the Buzz Bombs

Christian: So let me ask you a practical question, and I'm sorry, this is just the way my mind works. But I'm thinking about, here you are in September, it's raining, you've dug this foxhole, there are two of you in the foxhole, and I'm still wondering the practical answers to these questions. A, how hard is it to dig a foxhole? B, how do two men sleep in a foxhole? C, it's raining and wet, how can you even sleep when it's so cold and wet and you two people are stuck in a hole?

George: Okay, let me tell you about that. We built little enclosures. We found wood around there and we built them. I had a little enclosure with my friend Tex. He was a little guy like I was, and it just had an opening big enough that you could go in sideways. We picked up a little pot stove that we got in the town there, and we had that in there. And then where we slept, we combined our shelter halves. You know, each soldier had a shelter half, and you put the two halves together, you build a tent. But we never built the tent there. What we did is we put the two shelter halves down on the ground, and then we each had a blanket, and so then we had the two blankets to put over us.

And so then in the middle of the night, somebody would come in and wake me up and say, "It's your turn to go on guard duty." So I would get up there in the freezing cold, and I'd stand against the outhouse we had there, my back against it with my rifle, looking this way and looking that way, banging my feet together to try to stay warm. I had to stand there for an hour, my turn to be on guard for one hour. And during that time, I got to tell you this, I looked up in the sky and there is a rocket going straight up with flames from the back. That was a V-2. The Germans had the V-2 bombs that had a long fuselage and the wings, and those things were going over to England, and when they hit, in a square block everybody got killed from the concussion.

Now, we never had any of those hit us, but we had plenty of buzz bombs. Oh, it was funny, because you talked about foxholes. We had a foxhole right there where three of us were standing, and here we hear this buzz bomb. And you know, the buzz bombs, they fly high and you hear them. Well, you hear the drone, and then all of a sudden the drone stops, then they come straight down, or they glide. Sometimes you don't even hear a drone, because some of them come in at a low altitude and then crash, and they're killing guys that were on piss call, that were way behind the lines.

And the one that almost hit us, in our wooded area, all of a sudden we're standing by this foxhole that I was telling you about, and we hear it coming, because it's at low altitude. And so we all dove in the foxhole. It was funny. This guy, his name was Huff, he was a pretty heavy guy. He went in first, and two of us dove on top of him, and that was hilarious. But the buzz bomb hit right at the edge of our area, our trees, and exploded, and evidently most of the shrapnel went forward, but some of it came backwards. That's where this piece came flying down and landed. And if it hit me in the chest, it would have killed me, or the head. But it landed at my feet. It didn't even touch me. It just landed, a chunk of shrapnel about this big.

Christian: Wow.

George: Landed at my feet. It was all round and curly, you know, sharp edges. But anyway.

Christian: Well, can I ask you some more questions? I'm so sorry, but curious minds want to know. So what's amazing to me, and I've talked to my son Hunter about this, there is something very interesting about military humor. And so what caught me is when you're saying your friend dove in and you guys dove in on top of him, and you said it was kind of funny. And here I am listening to this terrible, treacherous situation that you were able to find humor in. And I am supposing that you're stuck in this situation, you have to find ways to cope. I mean, is that right?

George: Well yeah, my friend Tex, he found ways of coping, because he was always saying these crazy things. But what was I going to say? Oh yeah, the reason why it was funny: you have to see Huff, what he looks like, and he was washing out of his helmet. Okay, you know, we used the helmets for everything.

Christian: I've heard. For everything.

George: I call it [unclear]. So he used it for everything, so that's what he was doing at the time. And you gotta see him, just imagine this fat guy Huff, and everybody used to kid him all the time. And it was funny because he got in there first and we all jumped on top of him. So yeah, it was funny. If one of us got killed, it wouldn't be very funny, would it?

Christian: Right.

George: But the aftermath was funny. So anyway.

Four Months on the Frozen Battlefields

Christian: And then one last question. So you talked about, you got to this place where this temporary area was, and then you had this foxhole, and it sounds like you spent a lot of time making this foxhole. It sounds like you made your home away from home, kind of. So I'm assuming that took a lot of digging out. But how long would you stay in this area? And would you have to go over and make another foxhole and start all over? How much time in each area?

George: Well, that's a very interesting question, thank you. Because we did stay in that area a long time.

Christian: Okay.

George: Because what happened is the Battle of the Bulge started in December. Okay, so we were there September, October, November, December, through all the rain and the snow and the cold, in that one area.

Christian: In that one area. You didn't follow?

George: Yeah. And when we were there, that was our home away from home, and that's where we used to go into the battlefields to pick up the bodies during the Battle of the Bulge.

Christian: Okay.

George: And now the bodies were frozen, unlike the bodies of Normandy, where the stench was there. I told you about it, it got into our clothing and we're spitting all the time, dry mouths, with that stench in our clothing that we slept in, in the foxhole. And compared to that, now we were in this area that was our home for a while. In fact, we were there for four months before we went into Germany. And like I said, we had 17,300 buried there when we left to go to Germany.

Now, the permanent cemeteries were not built until 1947, two years after the war. So all of these bodies, first of all, they had to give this land back to the farmers. They had cows on that land before we took it over, and then after, we gave it back. But I did a film, [title unclear], and I take, no, it wasn't that film, excuse me. It was a second film called Memories of France. Well, what the hell film was it anyway? Right now my mental block, which film was it? It had to be the first or second film, because that's the one, by the way, those of you people that are listening, with the teachers.

I had a group of teachers, and walking over the temporary cemetery, where the crosses are now all gone and the bodies are removed, because now it's like in 2007 or '08, when I went back to do documentaries. So that's when I took teachers. So in that film you can see I'm showing teachers where we used to lay the bodies, right at the fringe of the woods, as they're being processed to be buried. And so I can envision that picture now, taking them there and showing them where the bodies were.

Malmedy and Germans in American Uniforms

Christian: Now, I have another question. So I just saw the movie Battle of the Bulge, I'd never seen it before, but I had read about Malmedy, and I'm wondering, did you guys bury the people?

George: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Malmedy, that's where the Germans slaughtered a bunch of our prisoners that they took. And our company, I didn't get involved in that, but our company had to pick up those bodies and take them back to the Henri-Chapelle temporary cemetery. And so yeah, that was, and then another thing that happened, there's a lot of things, I'm trying to think of what happened there. But that's one of the things that happened. I've been back there several times, by the way. There's a museum right there across from the field where these guys were all slaughtered.

And in fact, after the war, the War Department came to my house, scared my mother to death, looking for me, because they had the Nuremberg trials going on and they wanted to know what condition these bodies were in that we picked up. So I had done that. And so there's a lot of things that happened while we were there. One of the little boys used to come, that we would chase away, and I saw him 50 years later, by the way, for the first time. I'll get into that in a minute. But he had a sister and a mother and father, and I knew the sister, and I'll get into that in a while, because I kept in touch with her after the war.

I studied French in college, and so I could write, I can write pretty good in French, and I can speak it so they can understand me. It's hard for me to understand what they're saying, because, like us, when we're talking to them we talk fast like this, it's hard for them to understand what we say. So you must be able to speak slowly, a lot more slowly. Anyway, getting back to Belgium. On Christmas Day, I told you about the strafing. Another thing that was happening around Christmas, there were Germans dressed in our uniforms.

Christian: Spies. I saw that in Battle of the Bulge. I was wondering if that was really true.

George: Oh yeah, yeah. We had a challenge every day. A lot of the stuff we used was baseball talk that we all knew, the baseball players that were in the World Series and all. And then we knew about comics like Blondie and Dagwood. You don't know about them, but we...

Christian: I do. Yes, I do.

George: Okay. So we used to challenge everybody with questions, because you don't know if they're a GI or not. And so three of these guys were caught right there in our area, and they were executed. And again, I wasn't involved in the execution, and I don't even know who was, but other GIs were involved in executing them. According to the Geneva Convention, anyone caught in your uniform, you know, is to be killed right away.

Christian: I mean, what kind of questions would you ask people, if you don't mind me asking?

George: Oh yeah, like, who was Babe Ruth? I would then ask questions about the guys that were active playing then. I remember St. Louis had a great team, so I would ask, "Who is this guy?"

Christian: All right.

George: Or, "You haven't heard of Blondie?"

Christian: Yeah, the cartoon.

George: Yeah, that's what you'd ask them, and they didn't know. "Well, who was her husband?" Dagwood. So there were a lot of questions. If they flunked the first question, you'd give them another question. But I didn't get to question these guys. I mean, the ones that were killed, I didn't get to question them and I didn't see them. We were going to reenact that in my first film, but my cinematographer, the area is not at all changed where they were executed, but he was with his camera and he's walking over this big berm, and I thought he was going to fall down, to photograph the area where these guys were killed.

Then we had pictures of them. There's pictures of that, and I don't know who did the photography, but there are pictures of those guys getting executed. And there was a young lady there who thought, because they were in our uniforms, that our own guys were being executed. She was 18 years old. Oh, we didn't find her. We didn't even look for her. Because my cinematographer, he's of German descent, [name unclear], and a very nice guy, by the way. He has a company in Kansas called Outpost Worldwide, if you ever want to check his website, Outpost Worldwide.

Every Veterans Day he calls me up, the only guy that calls me every Veterans Day. And the last Veterans Day, three gay guys right here in my neighborhood took me to lunch. Palm Springs, a lot of gay guys, you know, and very few girls. The gals don't like to come in.

Christian: All right, well, we're going off on a tangent, so I'm going to bring you back.

George: All right.

Christian: So you spent a lot of months then...

George: Some funny things, and here they are.

Christian: Go ahead. Yeah, so I'd love to hear the funny things, but all I was saying is I'm taking you back. You're in Belgium, you're there for like four months, the Battle of the Bulge is going on, they're having to bring the people back. You were talking about the bodies being frozen, so it wasn't as bad as it was in Normandy. But what happened after you were there? What happened next?

George: The stench wasn't as bad, the stench wasn't going. Yeah. Well, right here behind me, you can't see it, but well, anyway, I was going to just say, one of the most important commendations, if that's what you want to call it: you were going to see a guy wearing a gold wreath on the sleeve, down here by the wrist. It's like a wreath. That is a Meritorious Service award, and we got that award, our whole company of 124 enlisted and officers.

We got that award because, you know, there was a standstill when we first got there in September. It looked like the Germans were pretty much defeated. Like after Normandy, with Paris, it looked like the war was over. But the Germans, the Battle of the Bulge, that's their breakthrough, coming back from Germany after they had withdrawn. Now in force, they come back, which is called the Battle of the Bulge because it's an encirclement. And a lot of our divisions withdrew to a better position. We had to stay there, the medics and graves registration had to stay there. And we could have been encircled. They could have come around behind us, and we would have been in the bulge. So yeah, so that battle, you know, I did...

The Wereth 11

George: In my first film I talked about the Wereth 11, which was 11 Black soldiers who were in the artillery. There were [unclear], these guys were artillery, and so they withdrew, and they only had one rifle and no food, and it was a cold, cold winter. And Wereth is right on the border. Wereth is a little village right on the border of Belgium and Germany, and they found themselves in this little village. And the family there took them in and got them warmed and fed, and some snitch turned them in. And so here come the SS guys, and they took these guys out in the cold, had them sit down in the cold, and they didn't know what to do with them. So they marched them in front of their vehicles. They brutalized these guys, 11 guys, and threw them in a ditch, and they were covered with snow.

The farmer there put a little wood cross in that area, which was there a long time, and finally the monument for those 11 soldiers. And there was a teacher there, she died a long time ago, but she was in our film, and she's talking about these 11 Black soldiers who were killed. We buried those guys in our temporary cemetery. But seven of them went home. They were sent back in a casket, like the others, to the family, where they wanted them buried, in any cemetery, at no cost. And the other four are in Henri-Chapelle.

And every year they have a ceremony there. I met a couple of Black generals and people from the administration at the time that came there. So there are ceremonies that go on there every year in September for these 11 soldiers. So I covered that, because what we did, we went back and we saw the lady that lived in a house at the time. She was 18 years old, and she tells us in German, because in Wereth a lot of people were German sympathizers and others were not. And so you didn't know who your friend was and who wasn't, because somebody turned them in to the SS. Anyway, we interviewed her, and in my film we have subtitles. And when we interviewed her, she was the same age as I was, and I was 81 when I did my first film, called The Lesson Is Priceless.

Let Freedom Ring: The Lesson Is Priceless

Christian: The name of your first film is The Lesson Is Priceless?

George: Yeah, it's prefaced by Let Freedom Ring: The Lesson Is Priceless. Because we had four young history teachers that I took. Three of them were young ladies and one was a young man, and they had the opportunity to talk to people who had lost their freedom. And then they showed that film to their kids. These are history teachers, by the way. They show their kids every year, the different kids, that film, and I go there and talk to the kids.

Christian: And so let me ask you real quick, if somebody is listening to this and they want to go and watch your movie, Let Freedom Ring: The Lesson Is Priceless, where can they find that movie right now?

George: Well, my website is being reconstructed, but I still think they can get there. The reason it's being reconstructed is because now I'm selling my films to past supporters for $15, and no cost for mailing or handling, and that's coming. The website is just being reconstructed, but they might be able to see a part of it. They could buy it there. They could go to letfreedomringforall.org, that's Let Freedom Ring for All, or they can send me an email, george@letfreedomringforall.org.

All right, anyway, we covered that, with this lady who told us the whole story. And then a couple of years later, Hollywood got involved, and these guys did a story on it, and in their trailer they said, "For the first time, this story is being told." So I got a hold of the director and I said, "Wait a minute, that's nice what you're doing, but it's not the first time." "Oh," he says, "I don't know who you are, I'm going to talk to my attorney," blah blah blah. Nothing ever came of it, it got dropped. But they did a recreation of this.

And my friends in Belgium have the Remember Museum. That's a good website to go to, the Remember Museum 1939-1945. The Remember Museum is also on my website too. But they're terrific people, and they have a museum that's like no other, because it's very personalized. The man is Marcel, Marcel and Mathilde, and Mathilde was younger than he is. He was a bachelor until he met her. He was a [unclear]. What happened there is, when the Battle of the Bulge started, all these guys from the 1st Division that were bivouacked on their grounds at that farm, the farmhouse, they left a lot of stuff there.

So they used a lot of this stuff for a little museum in his house, in an attachment like a big garage to his house. Now he's got a big museum there, and wonderful things there. And he's very mechanical. First of all, he's a [unclear] American. There's a Sherman tank that he rebuilt that was left there by our troops at the end of the war. That's how all these reenactors get all of our stuff, because there's so much stuff we left there that reenactors in every country have picked up and taken care of, and some guys have made a lot of money reselling stuff. But anyway, that's another story.

But anyway, this lady tells you exactly what happened there. And so eventually a monument got put there, and I mentioned it earlier, I've met Black generals that come there, and other people. And it's always really cold, so September's cold. And they do that in memory of these soldiers that were killed.

Christian: I appreciate you telling that story, because honestly I've never heard it, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners haven't either. So thank you for telling us that story. I think everybody should go and look at George's website and try to find his films, order them from him, email him. He's got five of them. And George...

George: Six. Six of them.

Christian: Six of them.

George: So we've gone to Normandy, as you know, in 2019.

Christian: I'm forgetting that one. That's right, we were there together. So you guys can go to his website, letfreedomringforall.org, and you'll see all of his work there. It's important work for everybody to watch. And George, I think we're going to have to have you come back, because we're still not out of the Battle of the Bulge. And I am wondering, when did you leave this temporary cemetery, and what happened after that? Now, we only have probably about eight more minutes left.

George: Okay, let me talk fast.

Eisenach and the 40% Who Stayed

George: What happened is, we left there in February to go to Germany. Our last, we had 17 temporary cemeteries throughout France, Belgium and Germany. So when we left there and went into Germany, we ended up in Eisenach, Germany, which is about 100 miles from Berlin, and that temporary cemetery there, when the war ended on May 8th, 1945. I celebrated with two bottles of wine, one red, one white.

But what happened is we disinterred the cemetery at Eisenach, and I had to handle the remains. First, identify them, to make sure you're identifying them with the dog tag on the temporary cross and the dog tag on the body, and then you had to put them in boxes and ship them to Holland and Belgium to be put in other temporary cemeteries. And they wouldn't put them in caskets until two years after the war, when the permanent cemeteries were built, and they were put in lined caskets, the remains, the bones. And the people who did that were the natives who lived there, the civilians who lived there, who were paid to do that.

And so the next of kin had the prerogative of having the remains of their loved one sent back to the US, at no cost to them, to any cemetery they wanted, or remain there. Now, excuse me, what remained there is 40% of those who were killed, because the other 60 percent returned home. So when you see a permanent cemetery over there, like Normandy, with almost 10,000 graves, that only represents 40 percent of what was there. Like Henri-Chapelle was 17,300 when we left, and then there were more bodies buried there after we left. And so of all those bodies, the 17,300 plus, 40 percent of them are buried in caskets in the new Henri-Chapelle cemetery, a beautiful cemetery.

And those cemeteries over there are beautiful, all of them, better than the ones here by far, because they're all white marble imported from Italy. And what's on those crosses and Stars of David? Date of birth, no. And date of death, which is approximated, that I know. And I learned that 50 years later, when I went back to Normandy for the first time and saw that there was no date of birth. I think we talked about this before. That upset me, because people visiting the cemetery have no idea who the soldier was. How old was he? Was he married? Did he have kids, or anything? You don't know nothing.

But you know what, the people over there, many of the people are discovering that information. Many of them have websites. And in Holland, they're fantastic. In Holland there's 8,300 Americans buried in the Margraten cemetery, and every one of those graves has been adopted, and the pillars with the names of the missing in action, every one of those has been adopted, long ago. And in many cases, who adopted it has been handed down to the next generation. They go there from time to time with flowers. And they don't have to do anything maintaining it, work-wise. I mean, we have people doing that over there that are paid to do it. Every permanent cemetery built by the American Battle Monuments Commission, who maintains them, has a supervisor and an assistant supervisor who live at each cemetery. So it's well taken care of. And if I had been killed, that's where I would want to be buried, except my mother would have had my remains come home, I'm sure.

Christian: Sure.

George: What time do we have?

Christian: Well, we're almost out. But I mean, seriously, can you come back next week?

George: I think so.

Christian: Because I still want to find out, after the war, I want to know where you were from, like, February to May. And then I know for seven months you stayed in Germany after that, and I haven't heard a lot about what that was like.

Next Time: Margot and a Jeep

George: Well, well, I can tell you some stuff in there that you might think is funny.

Christian: Yeah.

George: And I can tell you about my girlfriend that I had, that was on a flying trapeze there in Germany. I can tell you about my jeep that I had illegally, and I can tell you about following her all over Germany, in places like Heidelberg and [unclear] and Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, and taking her home to Frankfurt, and getting caught by the MPs there.

Christian: All right, stop right there. That is enough of a tease for our audience, for them to come back next week. Next week when we come back, everybody, we're going to talk to George about the end of the war, where he was at the very end, what he did during the sustainment period, and if we have time, we'll talk to him about his life postwar. If we don't have time, we're gonna have him come back the following week, because listening to George is such an honor and a treasure. I don't want to rush through these stories. And I know our audience listening to these, you are teaching us so many new things, George. And it is very, very rare for anybody to sit down and listen to a World War II soldier who can tell to this detail what they remember. So we just appreciate you so much sharing these stories with us, and we thank you so much for making time and coming back. You're an amazing person.

George: And you know, I'm gonna be 96 on June 16th.

Christian: It's unbelievable.

George: I'm gonna tell you how I escaped being court-martialed, because I had a jeep illegally for seven months.

Christian: Okay, yes. I mean, we're gonna have a great... I can't wait till next week. Jason, what do you think?

Jason: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to hearing that story.

Christian: I mean, let me ask you, you're a young guy, you probably haven't had a lot of World War II history. What is it like listening to George tell his stories?

Jason: Well, it's amazing, because I grew up with my grandparents, who were both born in the '30s. My grandparents, who really talked about the war a lot, were both born in the mid-'30s, and so they remember Pearl Harbor, they remember all these events. And I remember being a kid listening to them talk about it, and just from them, they were kids when they went through it. And so it's amazing to hear someone who lived through the events, not hearing about them just as the news, but actually was there. And it just brings a whole new gravity to it. My grandmother lost a cousin who went down on the Lexington, and just hearing these stories from someone who lived it is absolutely incredible. And so, George, I just want to thank you so much for coming on today, and last week, and hopefully next week, to just tell us about this.

George: Just quickly. My late wife, who died in 1981, and I had the two children by her. She and my kids never heard any stories. My kids now, my daughter's 51, she has two kids, one little autistic girl and a son, 12 and 15. And I have a son who's gay, and they live in Colorado, and they've never heard these stories. Now, my wife that I'm married to now, I married Dottie in 1991. It's 10 years after my wife died, because I raised my kids for 10 years, and I'm most proud of that, more than anything, because my daughter was 11 and my son was 10. And so I'll let you go with that. I know my time's up, and I don't want to overdo it. So we'll see you next week.

Christian: Yeah, we are so blessed by you, George. And if you're listening to this and you have enjoyed these stories of George's as much as I have, I would love for you to write me at Christian at Normandy Stories and just tell me what it's meant to you, listening to George's stories. I want to read some of these to George next week. So shoot me a note, Christian at Normandy Stories, and let me know what you think about these stories. Also, could you leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever else you listen to podcasts? We could really use some reviews for our podcast. So anyway, Jason, I'm going to let you take us out. Please make sure to visit thegirlwhoworefreedom.com. We are still taking donations, there's a donate button there, and we really appreciate it. Those go to our operating costs, and eventually I hope to get enough supporters so I can pay Jason for showing up every week. So yeah, Jason, I'm turning it over to you.

Jason: Well, thank you for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everyone has a story to tell, and you can be the one to tell it.

Christian: Yes, you can. Bye, everybody.