Beeson Podcast, Episode 328
https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2017/The-Lost-Eleven
Denise George, Harlan Hobart Grooms, Jr.
February 21, 2017

Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from the Beeson Divinity School on the Campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.

Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Well, I have a great conversation in store for you today with my beloved wife, Denise George, and our dear friend Hobart Grooms, Hobie Grooms. Actually, I've interviewed these two people before, because they have collaborated on other writing projects. And there's a brand new book that's just coming out this month from Penguin Random House called The Lost Eleven. It's a World War II story. You don't want to miss it. 
	But before we get into the story and the book, I want to talk to Denise just a little bit. You know when I first met Denise, I was a youth evangelist, and she was dating the pastor's son of another church. And she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. But you know what else attracted me to her was that she was a writer. She'd just published a letter to the editor in our local press, and that really impressed me. 
	Well, she's continued to be a writer, a major league writer, written, how many books, Denise?

Denise George:	Too many. 

Timothy George:	Too many, she says. 

Denise George:	30.

Timothy George:	Thirty books. And we're going to talk about the most recent book that she's just published, The Lost Eleven.  But to begin with, Denise, say a little bit about your own calling as a writer. That's something you've always felt very deeply since I've known you. 

Denise George:	I have just always felt called to write.  I am like Jeremiah when they told him he couldn't preach, he said, "I cannot not preach." I never remember a time when I wasn't writing. 

Timothy George:	A fire in his bones, that's what Jeremiah says.

Denise George:	A fire, it is a fire in my bones. It is a passion. It's an itch that is very hard to scratch. 

Timothy George:	Now you studied writing when we were in Boston, at Harvard, in one of their programs, and began to publish books and have continued to do so right until now. 
	Now, the particular style of writing, or method of writing that you use in this book, The Lost Eleven, is called narrative non-fiction. What is that?

Denise George:	It's a special kind of writing, because you take a true story and instead of just journalism, names, dates, what happened, you put it in the form of a story so that you have the suspense and the excitement, the dialogue. It reads like a novel, an exciting action-packed novel. You get to know the characters, and it's just the power of story.
	I believe that if we taught our children history in the form of story, we wouldn't have a problem with children learning history. And this is a part of history that has been dormant for seventy years. And it is, the story is just now coming to light.

Timothy George:	Let's get into The Lost Eleven, and Hobie, I want to ask you to say a little bit about who are these lost eleven, and why were they forgotten for so long, and what were they involved in in World War II.

Hobart Grooms:	The lost eleven were eleven African-American artillerymen who were members of the 333rd field artillery battalion. And they were in support of two units, the 106th infantry division and a cavalry outfit, on the border of Germany. 
	At this time of the war, the casualties of the Americans had been very heavy, and inexperienced units were replacing units that had been on line and had been, sustained losses and had been in combat for months. And they were members of an artillery battalion in support of these two units. The eleven were, as I said, African-American artillerymen who had been with this unit since it was created in the United States and had landed on Utah Beach and had been engaged in severe fights, sieges at Brest and St. Lo, and then fought their way across France all the way to the German border.

Timothy George:	So they were part of the D-Day operation?

Hobart Grooms:	Exactly. It was, many would think that it was unusual to have African-Americans in an artillery unit, because most of them were used as longshoreman, unloading and loading ships, driving supply vehicles, the Red Ball Express, which had to take supplies from Saint Lo all the way to the German border. 
	But there were several artillery units, all black, with white officers, that were exemplary outfits. And these were two of them, the 333rd and the 969th.

Timothy George:	And what they were involved in, we're going to talk about what happened to them. The kind of tragic fate that met them there, was called the Battle of the Bulge. We all know that term, probably, from movies and maybe a little history. Tell us, Hobie, what is the Battle of the Bulge?

Hobart Grooms:	In December of 1944, most Americans, generals and unit commanders, thought that the war was almost over. They had swept through France and captured Paris, gone to the German border, and they thought that the Germans were exhausted and couldn't put up any resistance. And therefore, that's why they placed more inexperienced units in the front lines. These outfits were thinly spaced apart and were, a number of them were inexperienced. 
	Hitler, however, had other ideas and had been surreptitiously gathering units for some months, and massing them on the border with Belgium and France. They had done this without use of radio communications, which could be tapped in by the Allies, and they gathered there in great numbers. And on the 16th of December 1944, they had three different armies broke through on a 50-mile front and caught the Allied forces, mostly American, asleep, essentially.

Timothy George:	And why is it called the Battle of the Bulge?

Hobart Grooms:	Well, the offensive was so successful. It was designed to go all the way through to the Belgium ports, but it did make deep incursions into the Allied front. It was such, so deep that it was literally a bulge into the American lines.

Timothy George:	Now this is February, Black History Month, so it's really great and appropriate that we're having this conversation today about these African-American soldiers who were involved in the Battle of the Bulge. 
	Denise, say a little bit about the question of race-relations at that time in the armed services.

Denise George:	Okay.

Timothy George:	And how that, that's a theme in this book that you draw out, isn't it?

Denise George:	There's a wonderful quote in the front of the book by Steven Ambrose. He says, "The world's greatest democracy fought the world's greatest racist with a segregated army." 
	At that time in history, the United States Armed Forces were segregated, which meant any African-American coming into, like the training camps, or actually the battlefields, would have separate barracks, separate tents. The Jim Crow laws, most of these men were from the South, and they came from places with strict Jim Crow laws, meaning that it was an equal but separate. Everything was separate. They used the, what they called the "colored" toilets, the "colored" water fountains. They could not go to the library, the public libraries, or swim in the public swimming pools. It was separate, completely separate. Black, white. 
	And when these men went into the army, this was the same situation. It was segregated. And even though they were fighting for the same rights, the same freedoms, they were fighting a double battle. They were fighting the German enemy overseas, and they were fighting civil rights at home, because they fought side-by-side but they didn't have the rights. And they were treated very badly by the white, other white GIs.

Timothy George:	That's a dimension of the story that is very moving, in a way, to hear the sacrifice they made in this condition where their full civil rights were not in play. It wasn't until President Truman, I think, that the Armed Forces were integrated.

Denise George:	It was on July 26, 1948, that, as president, Truman signed an executive order 9981, which abolished all racial discrimination in the United States Armed Forces. But that was three years after the war ended.

Timothy George:	In a way, this story resonates with me, in a little bit like the Tuskegee Airmen. Say a word about that. Is this a fair comparison?

Hobart Grooms:	I think it is. This is a unit that was considered one of the top artillery units in the 8th corps, General Troy Middleton's outfit. They had started off as a bunch of rough, Southern boys who had no experience. And the book shows how they were trained and how they developed into an organized unit that had a reputation for being able to put out more shells in a given length of time than just about any other. They were two of the crack outfits in the war. And the eleven were members of that outfit from the start.

Timothy George:	Now, I want to talk a little bit about who they were and where they came from and get into their personal histories. But before we do that, I think it would be interesting to know how the two of you came across this story. How did this idea arise, and why are we just now, all these many years later, talking about the lost eleven?

Hobart Grooms:	I've tried to reconstruct it. I read for the first time about this incident in an article in the Tuscaloosa News, written by Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat Dispatch, I think it is, or Democrat Gazette. And it described, in several paragraphs the, how this came to be and how these eleven southern boys, for the most part, were captured and managed to escape after your unit was captured, and walk through the snows to get the help and were eventually captured and butchered by the members of the SS. The First SS Recon Company.
	Nothing was ever heard about it, because it was two months before the bodies were found. They were buried in the snow and there was no investigation until a couple of years later. And nothing ever came of it, and it was only years later that it was discovered, the incident was discovered, and a memorial was erected. And from then on, bit by bit, people found out about it. 
	But it was not mentioned in any history book on the Battle of the Bulge until 2016, in a book called The Snow and Steel. 

Timothy George:	That's just last year.

Hobart Grooms:	Yeah, right. Early in the year I got a copy and there's a paragraph in there that mentions it, and also references in footnotes the various newspapers and a film that was made by the co-author of this book. So it really lay dormant for fifty years. 

Timothy George:	We should mention the co-author with Denise is Robert Child, who has done a documentary film, right Denise, on the book?

Denise George:	Yes.

Timothy George:	Or on the story.

Denise George:	Yes, called the Wereth Eleven. 

Timothy George:	The Wereth Eleven. And Wereth was the town, I guess, where they actually ended up and were killed, right?

Hobart Grooms:	It's more of a Hamlet. It's too small to be a town, because you can find it on Google Earth, and you can go through it in three or four houses it seems like.

Timothy George:	Yeah, right on the border of Belgium and Germany where this happened.

Hobart Grooms:	Quite near there. It's in Belgium, but near the German border.

Timothy George:	Now, one of the fascinating things, Denise, about this story is the family, that they ended up at the, I guess, the farmhouse or the house of this family, and the young son who took an interest in this. And kind of helped bring the story to light these many years later. Tell us a little bit about that. 

Denise George:	A plane came by and bombed the captured, the Nazis, the captured, the SS, the German soldiers, and these eleven men were able to escape. And they ran straight northeast into Belgium. And they ran for a whole day without stopping, and they finally saw a little village, Wereth. And just a small little village, a few houses. And they saw this one house, the first house, and it belonged to the Langers. They had, oh, a bunch of children at that time. A dozen, at least, and they stopped at the house, and they were afraid to go in, but they knocked at the door and the Langers, strict Catholic, devout Catholic family, German family, or Belgium family invited them in, sat them at the dinner table, fed them, heated up the stove, wrapped blankets around them, were very kind to them. 
	And they were there for about an hour, and the German soldiers captured them. They saw them. I think someone, a neighbor alerted them that they were there and they were the enemy, and they captured them. And they took them out in the snow and made them sit by the side of the house for hours in the freezing snow, freezing temperatures. And, I've recorded the conversation of the men. They knew they were going to die. When they, the officers came back, they took them to a cow pasture, and they tortured them. And then killed all of them.

Timothy George:	How do we know they were tortured?

Denise George:	Well, the examiner, their bodies were found two months later, and the examiner examined their bodies. And their bones were broken, there were gunshots in areas of their bodies not meant to kill them, but just to wound them. Torture. They ran over them with a car. They, and a lot of this, they would not, I don't think, they would torture white men. White GIs like this. Because of course, if was against the Geneva Convention, it was against everything.
	And I also think, that when their bodies were discovered, the book tells what they had, the items they had in their pockets. And very fascinating, and some were Bibles, government issued Bibles, and one had a little silver cross. But, what was so interesting was there were several other massacres, civilian and military massacres, in that area that took place around that time. And this one was completely left out of the final 1949 Congressional Report on War Crimes. And it was put into the National Archives, it was classified secret, this report, and it was buried and no one knew about it for the next seventy years.
	These men's parents and families had no idea what had happened to them, they just disappeared. They were just dead. And no mention was ever made. And, here again, I believe it was because they were African-Americans. Don't you Hobie, at that time?

Hobart Grooms:	I think, really, I'm convinced of that. There have been numerous accounts of Allied soldiers being killed by members of the SS after they'd been captured. This is the only one that I've ever read about where captured soldiers were not only shot, but were butchered. Some of their fingers were cut off, they were shot while bandaging members, fellow members of their unit. It, I think it had to be a racist thing which, you have to remember the anger that these people, SS troops, were feeling as they were coming right out of their homeland. And this was the final thrust of the war. 
	And this was a unit, the first Panzer division, SS Panzer division, had been referred to as the blow-torch division for their, in their campaigns in Russia, which says it all. They went through and nothing was left alive or living when they passed. I think it was a frustration and it was anger. It was their racist philosophy, which the SS were inculcated with. 
	The other, more notable atrocity that happened the same day with members of this unit, this was a recon unit of the First SS, which slaughtered sixty-something Americans at an intersection called Malmedy in Belgium. It is highly publicized. It was the news that went out over the whole Western Front as soon as it happened, and it made a complete change in the attitude of American soldiers toward the German prisoners. Because to hear that their prisoners had been slaughtered and had members...
	But that received a wide publicity around the world. The eleven at Wereth were left a secret. And so the name comes unknown, because they were.

Timothy George:	The lost 11.

Hobart Grooms:	The lost 11.

Denise George:	The lost 11. 
	And it wasn't until 2013 that the House of Representatives passed a resolution to correct the omission of the 1949 subcommittee report. And the statement, the first part of the statement reads like this:
	"Our country shall be forever grateful to every member of the greatest generation who contributed to the defeat of fascism in Europe, and laid down their lives so that future generations could enjoy the blessing of freedom. That's certainly the case with these eleven black soldiers who courageously fought on the front line in the Ardennes, against a relentless enemy and eventually made the ultimate sacrifice for their fellow soldiers and our nation."
	And even though the book has an ending that they were massacred and killed, this is the hope. The book ends with hope, because they have been recognized, the resolution has been passed, and I really want students, high school students, to read this story, especially African-American students, because these men are heroes. They were some of the best artillery in the whole war. In fact, Yank Magazine, in 1944, wrote an article praising them. They could hit a church steeple directly, precisely, at nine miles away with their Howitzer. And they were really good at what they did.
	And they just, also, it's these individual men who are so wonderful. One was on a baseball team in Piedmont, West Virginia, and he taught the other men how to throw a grenade. He was 38 years old. He did not even have to enlist, he was too old. But he enlisted and he taught the other, younger GIs how to throw a grenade. And he said, you throw it just like a baseball. And he was the advisor and the father kind of of this whole group.
	The relationship between these men was just so special and they were just so good at what they did. And I found myself getting to know these men. I'd never heard of them, until Hobie shared the idea with me. I found myself coming to know these men, know their families, and really loving what they did and what they did for each other. And then when they were massacred, tortured and massacred, I thought, how can I put this in? And I cried when I wrote it. I cried when I proof-read it, edited it, because it's just so graphic. But it had to be included, because this was their sacrifice. 
	But they're just, they're incredible men. And I know one of the men died with a picture of Jesse Owens, who had just won, nine years before, four gold medals in the Berlin Olympics.

Timothy George:	That was 1936, right?

Denise George:	1936. And Hitler was so upset that an African-American had shown up his Aryan athletes that he wouldn't shake the hands of any of the black African-Americans, and he would not shake Jesse Owens's hand. Well this was Georgie Davis's hero, and he kept his picture up on his family wall of portraits. And he took that picture of Jesse Owens winning those gold medals with him, and it was in his pocket when he was massacred.
	This story has a lot of heart. It's not just dates and facts. It has that. But it also has heart. 

Timothy George:	You know, this story is a very dark story, this story has a lot of suffering, a lot of horror, in a way. War is hell. Somebody said that. And you can see that kind of played out in the lives of these eleven African-American soldiers. But it's also about patriotism, it's also about heroism, it's about sacrifice and courage in the face of great, great adversity. 
	And now, we live in a time and in a country where racial tension is very high, and I wonder if maybe each of you would comment as we close out the conversation about that dimension of what do we all have to learn, not only African-Americans, but all Americans, from these eleven African-American soldiers and what they did and what that means for us today.

Denise George:	They were certainly heroes and they were fighting for freedom. Yet they didn't have freedom here in this country until many years later. I like stories about heroes who sacrificed themselves for others. We don't hear many stories like that anymore, but there are great World War II stories that include these people. And some of them, we never learn their stories.

Hobart Grooms:	I think that when the term sacrifice comes out, and what hits me through from the very beginning of this is that, once they were taken in by this Belgian family, they were fed and given warmth and their clothes were dried. And when it was learned that an SS patrol was on the way, they voluntarily left the house rather than put this family in peril. They could have been executed by the approaching Germans for harboring American soldiers. But they voluntarily left and gave themselves up to the approaching Germans. And to me, that says a lot, that these men did not want to endanger their hosts. So there's an element of sacrifice there.
	But I'm also struck as to the fact, this unit went on to receive a Presidential Unit Citation at the Battle of Bastogne, along with the other all-black artillery unit. And this is the first unit, black unit, to receive that high honor in World War II. They are men that gave their best, that fought their best. They fought courageously, and for freedoms that they really never got to enjoy. And that hits me as I reflect on this whole incident.

Timothy George:	Denise?

Denise George:	One thing, too, I think is really interesting. We would not know about these men had it not been for a little 12-year-old Belgian boy who remembers the eleven men, Langer, coming to the house, Herman Langer, coming to the house, and one of the soldiers gave him a handful of Chiclets chewing gum. And it made an impression, just all of the eleven, made an impression of 12-year-old Herman. And in the front of the book, we talk about but for the compassion of a 12-year-old Belgian boy, the tragic fate of eleven black American soldiers might have been forever lost to history. 
	Little Herman found the bodies two months after the massacre when he and his family were out for the first time to go to church. They had been homebound because of the violence in Wereth, and he found their bodies and they called the authorities and examiners. 
	Fifty years later, the men had made such an impression on him, that he had moved away from Wereth, he was in his 60s. He went back on the 50th anniversary of the massacre that no one really knew about anymore, and he placed a memorial on that site. And that's where the memorial now is honoring these men that he remembered. And out of that came a committee who is now holding a yearly memorial service there. And hundreds and hundreds of people from the United States and from all over Europe are coming to that little community to pay tribute to those eleven1 men. And that was because of little 12-year-old Herman Langer. Otherwise, we would not know about the story today.

Timothy George:	We've been talking about a book called The Lost Eleven, the forgotten story of black American soldiers brutally massacred in World War II. It's published by Penguin Random House. Written by Denise George and Robert Child. And it can be ordered on Amazon.com. It's available. It's launched this month, and I want to thank my two guests, Denise and Hobie, for your contribution to this podcast and to this story, for your good labor and your good work.

Denise George:	And I want to thank Colonel Grooms. He was in every part of this. I could not, this book would have never been written without Hobie Grooms, never.

Timothy George:	And I should say, this is the second kind of collaboration, because both of you were very deeply collaborating on another book called Behind Nazi Lines, which is the story of our great friend, Gerow Hodges, for whom our chapel is named here at Beeson. So we have all these connections, but thank you both for your commitment and for your involvement. And especially for this conversation today.

Hobart Grooms:	Thank you, Timothy.

Denise George:	Thank you.

Announcer:  	Announcer:	You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational, evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.


 






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