William Edward Pritchett, Jr. was born and raised on Rural Route 2 near Camden in Wilcox County, Alabama. His parents, William E. (Willie) and Julia Lewis Pritchett farmed the fertile soil of the Black Belt and fed and reared their very large family there.

In June of 1942, when William, Jr. registered for the WWII draft, he was 20 years old, listing his birthdate as the 3rd of March, 1922. He was 5’9” tall, weighed 155 lbs., and was employed in the local hardware store in Camden.

He was selected for service in the US Army and enlisted on 2 Nov 1942 at Ft. Benning, Georgia. He had completed 3 years of his high school education and entered the service with the rank of Private.

Pvt. Pritchett became part of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, Battery C, a segregated military unit. The unit landed at Normandy in early July 1944, was sent to Brittany, where it participated in the siege of Brest in August and September, and then battled across Northern France before arriving in the Ardennes sector as part of the corps artillery of the U.S. VIII Corps.

The unit arrived in the small village of Schoenberg near St. Vith, Belgium, in October. The Service battery was situated west of the Our River while howitzer Batteries A, B, and C were located on the east side of the river to support Army VII Corps. The 333rd Field Artillery Group and the 969th were equipped with 155mm howitzers, and the 771st Field Artillery Battalion was equipped with 4.5 inch guns. They initially supported the 2nd Infantry Division and its replacement, the 106th Infantry Division.

At the onset of the Battle of the Bulge, the unit was about 11 miles (18 km) behind the front lines.

In the early morning hours of December 16th, German artillery began shelling the Schonberg area. By the afternoon, with reports of rapid German infantry and armored progress, the 333rd FAB was ordered to displace further west but, at the request of the 106th Div. artillery commander, to leave 'C' Battery and Service Battery in position to support the 14th Cavalry and 106th Division.

By the morning of December 17th, the Germans were in Schonberg, and in control of the bridge across the river that led to St. Vith. Service Battery tried to displace to St. Vith through the village and were brought under heavy fire. Those not killed were forced to surrender. However, eleven African American men of different Batteries who were caught on the east side of the river went overland in a northwest direction in the hopes of reaching American lines. At about 3 pm, they approached the first house in the nine-house hamlet of Wereth, Belgium, owned by Mathius Langer. A friend of the Langer's was also present.

The men were cold, hungry, and exhausted after walking cross-country through the deep snow. They had two rifles between them. The family welcomed them and gave them food. But this small part of Belgium did not necessarily welcome Americans as "Liberators." This area had been part of Germany before the First World War and many of its citizens still saw themselves as Germans and not Belgians. The people spoke German but had been forced to become Belgian citizens when their land was given to Belgium as part of the First World War repatriations. Unlike the rest of Belgium, many people in this area welcomed the Germans in 1940 and again in 1944, because of their strong ties to Germany. Mathius Langer was not one of these. At the time he took the Black Americans in he was hiding two Belgian deserters from the German Army and had sent a draft age son into hiding so the Nazis would not conscript him.

About 4 pm, a four man German patrol of the 1st SS Division, belonging to Kampfgruppe Knittel arrived in Wereth in their Schwimwagen vehicle. It is believed a Nazi sympathizer informed the SS that there were Americans at the Langer house. When the SS troops approached the house the eleven African American soldiers surrendered quickly, without resistance. The Americans were made to sit on the road, in the cold, until dark. The Germans then marched them down the road. Gunfire was heard in the night. In the morning, villagers saw the bodies of the men in a ditch at the corner of a cow pasture. Because they were afraid that the Germans might return, they did not touch the dead soldiers. The snow covered the bodies and they remained entombed in the snow until January when villagers directed members of the 99th Div. I&R platoon to the site. The bodies had been frozen and unmolested since the massacre. The official report noted that the men had been brutalized, with broken legs, bayonet wounds to the head, and fingers cut off.

Seven of the men were buried in the American Cemetery at Henri-Chapelle, Belgium, and the other four were returned to their families for burial after the war ended. Herman Langer, the son of Mathius Langer, who had given the men food and shelter, erected a small cross, with the names of the dead, in the corner of the pasture where they were murdered, as a private gesture from the Langer family on the fiftieth anniversary of their deaths.

But the memorial and the tiny hamlet of Wereth remained basically obscure. In a tiny hamlet with no school or shops, there were no signs on the roadways to indicate the memorial, and it was not listed in any guides or maps to the Battle of the Bulge battlefield. Even people looking for it had trouble finding it in the small German speaking community.

In 2001, three Belgium citizens embarked on the task of creating a fitting memorial to these men and additionally to honor all Black GI’s of World War II. With the help of an American physician [Norman S. Lichtenfeld, MD] in Mobile, Alabama, whose father fought and was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, a grassroots publicity and fund-raising endeavor was begun. The land was purchased and a fitting memorial was created.

Other memorials to The Wereth Eleven can be found in Worchester, Massachusetts at the Winchendon Veterans Memorial Cemetery; and, at Miller Park in Bloomington, Illinois. There is also a United States Senate Resolution dated 17 March 2017 stating in part “Resolved, That the Senate, on behalf of the United States, recognizes the dedicated service and ultimate sacrifice of the 11 African-American soldiers of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion who were massacred in Wereth, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.” In addition, a movie was made in 2011 entitled The Wereth Eleven.

A simple search of the internet and other resources will reveal a wealth of information on the story of the murder of The Wereth 11, the Battle of the Bulge, the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion and the Wereth 11 Memorial in Belgium – including William E. Pritchett, Jr. He is buried in McCaskill Cemetery in Wilcox County, Alabama.

See links on Facts tab on this site.

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

Some Sources:

Wikipedia

U S War Memorials.org

Wereth.org

National World War II Museum.org

William E Pritchett Jr