The Lost Eleven: The Forgotten Story of Black American Soldiers Brutally Massacred in World War II

by Denise George, Robert Child

Their story was almost forgotten by history. Now known as the Wereth Eleven, these brave African-American soldiers left their homes to join the Allied effort on the front lines of WWII. As members of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, they provided crucial fire support at the Siege of Bastogne. Among the few who managed to escape the Nazi’s devastating Ardennes Offensive, they found refuge in the small village of Wereth, Belgium. A farmer and supporter of the Allies took the exhausted and half-starved men into his home. When Nazi authorities learned of their whereabouts, they did not take the soldiers prisoner, but subjected them to torture and execution in a nearby field.

Despite their bravery and sacrifice, these eleven soldiers were omitted from the final Congressional War Crimes report of 1949. For seventy years, their files—marked secret—gathered dust in the National Archive. But in 1994, at the site of their execution, a memorial was dedicated to the Wereth Eleven and all African-American soldiers who fought in Europe.

Drawing on firsthand interviews with family members and fellow soldiers, The Lost Eleven tells the complete story of these nearly forgotten soldiers, their valor in battle and their tragic end.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, American History, Military History, War, Military Fiction

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2017

About the author

Denise George is an internationally popular writer and speaker best known for creative Biblical application. Denise is married to Dr. Timothy George, executive editor of Christianity Today and founding Dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s a sad truth that after World War II stories of the valor and bravery of white American soldiers were preserved far better than those of American soldiers of color. But in a new non-fiction book, “The Lost Eleven” by Denise George and Robert Child, the authors seek to change that by shining a light on one important, forgotten story: that of the 11 black soldiers of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion who fought bravely for their country and who were brutally killed by German forces. However, the book is so poorly written and researched it leaves readers with more questions than answers.

For starters, rather than focus the book on the 11 soldiers, the authors dedicate nearly two-thirds of the text to a decidedly well-known story: that of Hitler, his constituents, and the development of the United States’ forces in general.

When we finally do get to know a handful of the 11 fighters from the 333rd Battalion, their stories come in broad, sweeping strokes, their voices so similar it’s impossible to distinguish one man from the next.

Rather than taking the time and care to give each man a full personal narrative, the authors instead give each man just one distinguishing marker: Corporal Bradley treasures the bars of Woodbury soap his wife sends; Private Adams met his young son for the first time while he was at training camp. Since the authors make little to no attempts to develop the men beyond these small trinket details, they still feel forgotten, faceless at the end of the 300-page work.

There also is the matter of sources. While the introduction claims material in this book was “gleaned from military documents, interviews, VIII Corps and 333rd Battalion after-action reports,” just a quick glance through the bibliography reveals a great imbalance among the reliability and rigor of sources, as the authors routinely cite history.com, third-grade teaching materials, and Wikipedia alongside a minor spattering of peer-reviewed pieces.

The sloppy construction of the citations themselves completely defeats the purpose of the bibliography, namely to make it easy for interested readers to learn more. Sources are cited using a Frankenstein style: a dash of Chicago, a pinch of Turabian, a dash of APA, and a handful of imagination, making “The Lost Eleven” feel more like a freshman research paper than a serious attempt at historical writing.

I'm a weekly book critic for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, IA. Read more of my reviews at laurafarmerreviews.com

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the story. I did not like the writing at all. It was very choppy. I do not think nonfiction should make up dialogue or thoughts. That falls under the realm of historical fiction.

[Kevin Keating · Rating 2 out of 5]

I ordered and read this book because I was interested in learning about a massacre of black troops by Nazis in WW2. While I liked the short chapters and quick pace, I found the dialog (which was invented by the author) and other prose to be way too trite and unrealistic, almost cliche. I wish this had just been a magazine article detailing the story and what we know rather than a fictional dialogue among historical figures. Sad to hear that this massacre was covered up and declared secret while others, like Malmedy, were not. No explanation or even curiosity about that from the author. I cannot suggest anyone else reading this, but I am glad to know more about the subject now.

[Sabrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I did like that this nonfiction didn't read like a textbook and there were actual paragraphs and chapter breaks I wish that more research had been done into the lives and happenings of the men this is about. We get bit of them here and there as they move through the war but not enough to satisfy. I was left wanting more even if that more is hard to come by there has to be some. This might be a good book for middle-grade school kids learning about different perspectives of world war II.

[Timothy Abbott · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought I was getting into an historical rendering of a little known event concerning the Nazi murders of 11 black GI's. Instead, I read more or less a limp war novel, complete with invented clunky dialogue. This was a Bait and Switch. It's as if they took a singular event, then padded it with invented flab to make a book out of it. Further evidence in this case be found in "Epilogue 2" which tells you what happened to all the names mentioned, like Hitler, Goering, Ike, etc...Really? 99% of all readers already know this common knowledge.
"The Forgotten Story of Black American Soldiers Brutally Massacred In World War2" screams the byline. Buried inside, a note to "Dear Reader" informs us that some [ some?!]of the dialogue has been invented. After 50 pages of of this, I am wondering why did I spend serious money on this hardcover edition? By the book's end, I am feeling seriously ripped off. Enough to deliver the worst book review in the past 20 years I have done. Some books are so bad, you just don't bother. But this one's marketing scheme pulled a fast one on me. I don't want cheesy black dialogue written by youthful white authors the likes of Denise George and Robert Child. I don't want to read historical novels. I don't want to be given a 3rd rate book at a first rate price.
I wanted my money back. The first time I have ever- ever- said that about a book.

[Terry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly written book about a terrible war crime. Unfortunately the made up conversations make this book more a work of fiction than nonfiction. The conversational language is very stilted and unrealistic. I doubt you could find 11 men in the whole army that went through training and numerous WW2 campaigns that spoke in mostly full sentences with very little Southern slang ( since most of the 11 were from the South) and without a single swear word in the whole book. The complete story of their capture and execution takes about 10 pages. The rest of the book reads like a sanitized history lesson. The conversation reminded me of a 3rd grade level novel with the authors putting their words and thoughts about everything from the Jim Crow laws to the desegregation of the armed forces into the mouths of the 11.Not what the characters really thought.

[KT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing story that almost never got told. Worth a read for history buffs

[Star Gater · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounding up.

The title says it all. I'm speechless. This definitely is not a waste of time or energy. The story is going to stay with me like many other stories from WW II and other areas of history.

From my seat, this is embarrassing. The US government officials were forced to amend history correctly. The story is heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. FYI: The author spends 3/4s of the book leading (necessary) to the massacre.

I found the audio on Hoopla. I have mixed feelings about the narrator, and I just didn't care for him. The voice was wrong to me.

[Michael Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an important and forgotten story from World War II and the "Battle of the Bulge" that deserves to be told and retold. Unfortunately, this book did not meet my expectations. At times, it seemed to be more a summary of key events of the war than the story of these eleven heroes. I would have liked more information on the lives of these men and their fellow soldiers of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion. Also, I found the writing style to be a bit jarring due to the verb tense the authors chose for the book's story. Imagined conversations also seemed inauthentic and even trite. I would have preferred a more "traditional" historical retelling of this massacre which should rank with the Malmedy and Stavelot massacres that also took place during the Battle of the Bulge. I would encourage anyone who has not heard of the Wereth Eleven to explore this story more fully.

[C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Lost Eleven, was a well-blended story of historical facts and a few added characters with some imagined dialogue that broughy history to life. I read a lot of negative reviews; this is one of the first books that Iread where I'm glad I looked past the reviews. This crucial story was rich with history, exquisite details, and the personal challenges of WW2 on the pages.

I felt transported into the scenes with the characters and could comprehend what they encountered in ways I would not have understood with just dry facts. It's astonishing to reflect on the riots, hanging, and racial segregation that played into so much of their daily lives in America and Europe as they struggled to fight and liberate other oppressed and traumatized people in foreign lands.

We often fail to understand how insane it is to ask people to lay down their lives for a country that does not respect, protect, or see them as equal. This is a brilliant work of history blended with Creative license to provide dialogue and bring you into the emotions that would've been relevant for that historic time and era of society.

If all you want is straight, recorded facts without emotion, this may not be the book for you. But if you want to be transported to a time, place, and understand history, you will enjoy the dramatic and creative features of this manuscript. This book is brilliant, and it takes a very hard subject matters (muders, torture, and hate) and makes them palatable.

[Brenda Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting story. Enjoyed the history. I won this book through Goodreads.

[Lisa DeWaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of eleven african american soldiers who fought and died for their country during World War II and who were sadly not recognized for their bravery and valor until 70 years later. It's an account of the soldiers, who became known as the Wereth Eleven as they took sanctuary in the town of Wereth, Belgium. They provided crucial fire support at the Seige of Bastogne, but were brutally massacred by Nazis when they were discovered. Their files were sealed until 1994, when a memorial was finallly dedicated to them. The author helps us get to know each of the eleven soldiers through interviews with family members and fellow soldiers. It also includes other things that were going on in the world at the same time to suppor their story. It was a very interesting part of history that I didn't know much about, and I found the book very interesting and informative. It's sad that these soldiers didn't get the recognition they deserved sooner. I thought the story was well told and compelling. It's definitely worth checking out if you enjoy history.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Padded. Heavily padded, in fact. That is how I felt after finishing this book. Not that the story wasn't worth telling and there was good information, but it could easily have been better focused on the story that was promised. But that was not my only trepidation. I get really nervous when dialogue is placed in the mouths of historical individuals that is not directly supported by the historical record. Perhaps it was, but I don't think so. And darn it, it just felt sloppy. I may be being too critical, but it is just how I felt. Like someone wrote the basic story, and another said, "but we need two hundred more pages!" I think a professional historian would have been a better choice to tell this story (and my apologies if she is a historian).

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides]

I believe that history (and all other fields of study) should be written about in an accessible way, but I think this book went a little too far. It's almost like it was written for a juvenile audience, at least in the first few chapters. If you are an adult and you pick up this book you probably don't need to have the 1936 Olympics explained to you in this simplistic way. Also, it feels like it jumps around too much as it introduces all the people who are involved.

There are a lot of footnotes, but some of them are "we found this in google books" and I feel a little weird about that. Many titles in Google books only give a limited preview, and context is iportant.

[Amy Lindberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title story is interesting. The book is not well put together. There is way too much information. I don't need to know about Eleanor Roosevelt's feelings about segregation. I didn't need to be reminded that Glenn Miller disappeared over the English Channel in 1944. I wanted to learn about this artillery unit in WWII, but probably about half the book is just generally about WWII - a host of characters and locations.

Easy to read, but not focused.

[Jared · Rating 2 out of 5]

4.5 Stars for the history
0 Stars for the made-up dialogue used as filler

[B. Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book documents an overlooked and unreported bit of history about a courageous group of Black soldiers, the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion who were specialists in firing the 155mm Howitzer, a new weapon. The unit gained a reputation as the most accurate Howitzer unit in Europe as it fought across France; even the Germans feared them. It was overwhelmed during the Battle of the Bulge, with only a few managing to escape. Many American prisoners were simply shot, as the Nazi forces where trying to move quickly in what was their final offensive assault to defeat British and American forces as they were closing in on Germany. 11 men from the 333rd managed to flee to Wereth Belgium and take shelter in a farmhouse with a sympathetic family, the Langers. When the SS troopers removed the soldiers from the farmhouse, thankfully without harming the family who had also hidden Jewish families throughout the war, they marched the soldiers off to a field where they repeatedly ran them over with their vehicles after forcing them to run in front of them in the freezing cold. During the Nazi "game" with their captives, also shot, dismembered and bayoneted them. They left the frozen bodies which quickly were covered by snow in the field. When the US army happened to be called to the site after one of the sons found the bodies months later when the snow melted, the army chose to classify the information and failed to report it as one of the massacres documented by Nazi troops, saying there was insufficient information. The information was incomplete because the army failed to investigate in any detail.
It was not until the Langer's son, Hermann, returned to his home town and created his own memorial in 1994 that local interest began to increase. By 1998, the first official memorial was held by local citizens and invited US army brass presented a posthumous medal to one of the company, Sergeant Forte, to his relatives. By 2004, several Belgians had raised funds to create a permanent memorial. The US armed forces has joined annual memorial services there. Finally in 2013, the 11 massacred soldiers from the 133rd Battalion were awarded 5 combat medals, including the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.
This book once more demonstrates who Americans are and what the country stands for. The Battalion's Black soldiers were repeatedly subjected to Jim Crow laws and harassment during training in the US and the military's segregation policy during the war. While they trained in England, the US military tried to get the English to adopt their own Jim Crow policies, which were staunchly enforced by MPs in the towns around the bases. The 133rd was one of the few groups of African Americans allow to fight in the European theater and then only because the military was literally running out of white boys to fight.
Unfortunately, the book is not very well written. The authors have tried to place their narrative of individual unit members in the overall context of the war, both Nazi and American events. While the intent is good, it's not as readable as it could have been. Still, it is important for the subject it discusses and should be read. I encourage everyone to take the plunge. It's pretty quick reading.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars. The information content of this book is excellent, telling a well-woven narrative of a Black artillery division in World War II, the racism they faced, their excellence in the face of that, and their military success. The story is fully situated in the larger story of American racism, Hitler’s military and domination plans, Jewish extermination, European people who lived through Hitler’s invasions.

However. The dialogue in the book is often ridiculous. The authors make clear in the introduction that dialogue is less historical than the rest of the prose, but it’s clear that they are inventing conversations with the goal of moving the content forward, because nearly everyone speaks in ways that *no one* speaks. Here are a couple of examples directly from the book: A married man says to his wife, in the context of hiding Jewish refugees, “As devoted Catholics, we cannot ignore suffering.” I was raised Catholic, and I can tell you that no one talked like this. And lest you say that I wasn’t in the middle of a war (certainly true), I served two years in a Catholic Franciscan ministry at a soup kitchen in a slum (crack vials outside our door on the sidewalks when we woke up in the morning), and we did NOT talk like this about how our faith was part of our service and actions. Second: A young Black man tells his parents that he is signing up to serve in the Army to fight the Germans, saying, “Black soldiers have fought in every war since the Revolutionary War, so I’m going to fight in this one, too.” I told my Black boyfriend, whose career is educating people about African American history, and he laughed right out loud at the idea of ANY Black person uttering those words to their family. Third: When discussing the second boxing match between Joe Louis and German Max Schmelling, a Black soldier says, “Louis, a Negro, dealt Hitler a damaging and embarrassing blow.” The dialogue is intermittently this ridiculous throughout the book.

The authors wrote a fantastically researched book that I thoroughly enjoyed for the history I learned. I’m glad I read it. They need to work on how to write believable dialogue, because it can’t be there just to move the plot forward if it’s not natural.

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful and carefully researched book, this begins as an almost deceptively easy read--short chapters focused as much on character, highlights, and snapshot moment make it read quickly, more like fiction in some ways, and push the reader forward from the beginning of the soldiers' stories on to the end which is foretold even in the title. As the book moves forward, it gets heavier and gains weight, both with history and violence--almost forcing a reader to slow down, and the end is as brutal and surprising as, probably, it should be in a book such as this, to mirror the truth of what happened.

I can only applaud the efforts that went into this book's creation, and the careful research. I will admit, I wished for more from the endnotes--over and over again when I was first reading, I'd look to the back of the book to get more information on a particular bit of information, person, or moment in history, only to find that the endnote was nothing more than a citation for what I'd already read in the text. But that said, the authors have done an admirable job of including the appendices which bring some closure to the book, to the extent that it is possible, and to show how the story of these men finally came fully to light, to be re-told in this book.

For those interested, I'd recommend it, with the caveat that I had tears streaming down my face as I read the final chapters, and even the first appendix.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the story. I did not care for the made-up dialogue. Authors sometimes do this to "enhance" the story. The degree to which this was employed by the author was over the top. Full dialogue between individuals who died and cannot talk about their last moments is fiction. It characterizes much of the book.

My biggest issue is accuracy. I expect historical non-fiction to be reasonably accurate. When I see a glaring error that is not a typo it lowers my opinion of the quality of the rest of the book. Twice in the lengthy epilogue the author states that General and later president Dwight D. Eisenhower was born and raised in Abilene, Kansas instead of Abilene, Texas. This brings up another point. A follow up on the key people in the story is a good device and useful to the story. In this case it was overboard. The author followed up on every single person mentioned in the book.

Finally, due to the glaring errors and extensive fictionalized dialogue, I cannot recommend this book. However, if the book were made into a movie, I would probably go see it. It is a very good story, just not well told as non-fiction.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. This book was well written about the true story of eleven Black American U.S. soldiers who were brutally murdered by German soldiers while going to a POW camp on December 17, 1944. Their murders were discovered by a Belgium boy two months after the boy’s family had taken them in to feed them and get them warm before the Nazi's found them and took them away. It was snowing when they left so the snow covered the soldiers' bodies until the snow started melting two months later. When the Belgian family notified the Americans about the bodies, officials notified the families of the soldiers that they had died but covered up how they died. The true story didn't come out until many years later. If you enjoy reading about history, you will like this book. The story not only tells about their murders but how they were treated by most white Americans in their Army camp, and how they had to work harder to become true soldiers and became the best after one white Captain believed in them and showed them kindness.

[Dee Halzack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written page turner. Even knowing what the end of the story was, I still couldn't put it down. The main characters were presented as really likeable, so the ending was even harder to take, particularly for a pacifist. I know that war includes many acts of brutality and many instances where people got carried away and did things totally out of character. My Lai, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib among other places, are proof that our own troops were not immune to atrocities. But this one was not committed in the heat of battle, but with cold premeditation and incredible brutality. This one brought tears to my eyes.

In the course of telling the story, the authors also provided a picture of what it was like for black soldiers who served during World War II. It made even more disgusting the fact that only 4% of black GI's were able to benefit from the vaunted G I bill after the war. That it was a Belgian who knew the men for less than 24 hours who first honored their memory is telling, given the status of race relations in this country.

[Steve Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am enamored with the forgotten historical stories in our country. This one had me from Page 1. These eleven Black men fought for our country, knowing that at home they were not equal. They left Jim Crow laws to go to Europe to fight on the front in World War II. They fought valiantly - honorably even - and then were captured and heinously slaughtered in the waning days of the war as the Nazis became desperate and more and more brutal. That's not where the story ends.
These 11 men were then essential forgotten: Left out of the records. Except for a young boy in Wereth, Belgium, who would never forget the kind Black American soldiers he met and later discovered dead in the pasture near his home. That pasture is now a memorial to the brave soldiers who fought and died in Europe.
The story is told through the voice of family members and fellow soldiers, from the young men they were before going to war until the tragic end. These are men, brothers, sons, husbands, and fathers. This story tells their stories. I will always appreciate that about history.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like there was a lot of general WWII history that was not directly relevant to the story. This is probably a very good thing for readers who are not familiar with the war but for someone like me who has read countless books about nearly all aspects of WWII it was redundant to the point that I think the book could have been half the page count.

That being said I am glad to have read this book and it was a good reminder of how hypocritical our country was during that time period. I was not born until almost 25 years after the war had ended which contributes to my horror at how poorly b,ack Americans were treated even while serving in the military. I just cannot comprehend how we condemned Germany for their treatment of the Jews and went to war in Europe while at the same time treating non-whites nearly as badly here.

Nothing drives home the horror of war like a story with personal details about individuals and this book is a great example of that.

[Tammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-written book on the Black American soldiers, members of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion from World War II. Denise George has done her research and done it well. During a time in American history when Blacks were still being segregated from Whites, this courageous group of men stepped up and defended their country, their comrades in arms and one another. They were never to be actually sent into battle, but were because of their accuracy in their weaponry. They would fight with and defend American troops during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes, Belgium. They were fighting against a country and Dictator who disliked the Blacks even more than the citizens in America disliked them. This is a story from World War II that should have been out in the open years ago, the story and memorialization of the Wereth Eleven.

[Brian Skinner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the book talks about stuff you would read about in just about any general history book about world war 2. Maybe it is meant for a younger audience but if you have read any history books about the war already you can pretty much skim it. The conversations in the book which are fully fabricated by the authors are kind of heavy handed in pushing the race angle. I get it . It is a book about a black regiment. I just found the conversations in it to be heavy on agenda. The men in depicted in this book definitely were courageous but to their are a lot of people in the battle of the bulge who probably deserve a book too. A lot of people died in that battle and to single out 11 guys based on their race is a bit weird.

[Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seemed that this book attempted to do too many things at once. It commented on American Racism, gave an overview of World War II, told the story of not only The Wereth Eleven but the whole 333 Artillery unit as well as, and it tried to tell the story of the Langer family and it was too much.

At times I thought that I was reading a screenplay for a Made-for-TV movie script and at other times I thought I was reading a script for a documentary.

I would recommend this book for libraries - especially middle and high school libraries; or to reading groups with

This is one of many stories that need to be told and that is one reason that I rated it a three.

[Robin Drummond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chronicles of Black soldiers in WWII; the "eleven" were tortured and murdered when they were confronted by and surrendered to a group of young Germans late in the war. It was a horrible episode in a war filled with horrible episodes.

This is a necessary book that begins to tell about more than a quarter of a million active-duty soldiers who fought for freedoms in Europe that they did not enjoy in their own country.

It's a riveting (if sometimes pedantic) accounting of a group we seldom acknowledge. Kudos o the author for persevering!

[South Brunswick High School Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 333rd Field Artillery Battalion fought bravely on the frozen frontlines of the Allied offensive. After escaping the Ardennes Offensive, eleven Black soldiers of the 333rd took refuge in the the small village of Wereth, Belgium only to be found, tortured, and executed by the Nazis. Their story remained unknown until 1994 when the son of the village who sheltered the soldiers built a memorial in their honor. This book blends historical fact and creative retelling to share an important story lost for decades.

[Kenneth Flusche · Rating 5 out of 5]

an excellent and interesting history of WWII European Theater. Yes it focuses on One Small Attrosity but it also contains a lot more. A flowing easy to read story.

Now to answer some of the cridicks yes everybody even Hitler talk like College Educated Americans but that helps with the readability. I wonder how much critisisium there would be if written in vernacular, german, and multable use curse words including N