US Army Corporal Sammie (NMN) Ingraham was born in Century, Florida on September 10, 1922, the son of Samuel and Callie Ingraham. His father supported his wife and five children as a laborer in a local lumber mill. When Sammie finished high school, he followed his father into the timber vocation as a lumberman, raftsman, and a woodchopper for the Alger-Sullivan Lumber Company.
When WWII erupted, he was inducted into the Army on January 20, 1943, and sent to Camp Blanding, Florida. After processing and training, he was assigned to Battery "A" of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, 6th Regiment. This particular battalion was a WWII racially segregated unit made up of all African America soldiers. After landing at Normandy in early July, the battalion saw continuous combat as they pushed the German army away from beaches and out of the area. It was here in the vicinity of La Haye-du-Puits, France that Sammie was killed in action on July 7, 1944, by shrapnel from German mortar/artillery fire. Following the war, his body was returned in 1948 and buried in the Century Cemetery in Century, Florida.
Sadly, his comrades of Battery "C" met an even worse fate during the Battle of the Bulge. On December 17, 1944, Battery "C" was overrun by the Germans, and most were killed or captured. But eleven became separated from the unit and when they reached the hamlet of Wereth, Belgium they were offered shelter by Mathias Langer. However, German loyalists in the village reported to the notorious 1st SS Division that black American soldiers were hiding in their village. The SS troops captured them, then marched them to a nearby field. There, they were beaten, tortured, and shot. The frozen bodies of the victims were discovered six weeks later, when the Allies recaptured the area. The SS troops had brutally battered the soldiers' faces, broke their legs with rifle butts, cut off fingers, stabbed some with bayonets, and shot at least one soldier while he was bandaging a comrade's wounds.
On 9-11-1994, Hermann Langer, son of Mattias Langer, erected a small stone cross to remember the 11 murdered men. On May 23, 2004, a new memorial was built on the site of the executions dedicated to the African American soldiers. It is believed to be the only memorial specifically dedicated to the African American soldiers of World War II in Europe.
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