Memorial

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S/Sgt Thomas J. Forte was a carpenter. He enlisted at Camp Shelby, Mississippi on 18 April 1941 and trained at Camp Livingston and Camp Gruber, Oklahoma. He went overseas in February 1944.

He was captured by German troops during the Battle of the Bulge in the town of Wereth, Belgium on 17 December 1944. He, along with 10 other prisoners, had their helmets and rifles taken, were forced to sit on the cold and wet ground until dark, and eventually made to run nearly 800 meters out of town, chased by a vehicle driven by the German soldiers. They were then brutally murdered and their bodies dumped in a roadside ditch. This atrocity is known as the Wereth Massacre or the Wereth 11.

An autopsy report on the 11 is ghastly: broken legs and arms, jaws shattered, fingers severed, bayonet wounds to the face and body, and bullet wounds designed to inflict anguish rather than death.

Since 2004, there has been a memorial at the site where these soldiers were murdered.

The complete story of the massacre can be found here: http://www.wereth.org