Bronze Star is worth the wait for veteran

A Hudson man is honored 60 years after dragging a fellow soldier to safety during World War II.

By ALEX LEARY
Published July 6, 2004

	[Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton]
	William De George, 78, of Hudson now has a Bronze Star to put beside his Purple Heart. The photograph at the bottom shows his graduation from boot camp in 1944. Daughter Debbie McGinley, 55, of Hudson, said of her father, "He had such courage at such a young age."

HUDSON - German artillery splintered the Huertgen Forest, pummeling the Americans hunkered down on its frozen, deadly floor.

The soldiers were advancing on Berlin, but on that gloomy morning in December 1944, even the toughest soldier wanted to dig a hole to China. "You wished you were an animal that could go down deep," William De George said Monday.

Then a 19-year-old sergeant with the Army's 9th Infantry Division, De George heard the cries of a wounded comrade: "Help me! Help me!" De George crawled across the ground.

Shrapnel had torn back the man's scalp, recalled De George, now 78 and living in Hudson. He dragged the soldier to safety.

Sixty years later, De George has earned recognition for that brave act and other displays of leadership. He has received the Bronze Star.

"I never thought I'd get it," said De George, looking at the medal in its black display box. A picture on the coffee table in his living room shows U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson pinning the Bronze Star on De George's shirt.

"You know, Senator," De George said during the May 26 ceremony in Sarasota, "you've touched my heart."

De George grew up in Queens, N.Y., and was eager to help in the war effort.

"Everybody was doing their part," he said. "I sort of felt left out."

His mother, who would not let him volunteer for the Navy Seabees, assured him that his time would come, and on St. Patrick's Day 1944, a draft notice arrived.

De George went on to participate in some of World War II's noteworthy fights, including the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Rhine River at Remagen in early 1945.

"Clank, clank, clank, you heard artillery fire all over the bridge," De George said. "We were running for dear life." He vividly recalls how a soldier in front of him fell into the river.

Despite the German onslaught, the Americans made it across. De George and his men happened upon a champagne factory.

"We walked around with a bottle under each arm," he said, laughing. They drank their fill and sprayed it on one another.

The next day, the celebratory buzz still high, De George and his company continued the march into Germany when, suddenly, a German Tiger Tank appeared.

De George, the oldest man in his company, rushed everyone to a farmhouse and assembled a firing squad. One of the tank's shells crashed through the building, its force knocking De George off his feet, hurling him into another room.

"Phuut, phuut, phuut - I was spitting plaster," he said, curling his lips to reproduce the sound. De George's head was badly injured, but the diversion he orchestrated allowed an American tank destroyer to get into postion and take out the enemy.

De George ended up in a hospital and was fitted with a metal plate. He was discharged in June 1945 and returned to New York for a 30-year career as a stereotyper for the Daily News. He got the Purple Heart, but the Bronze Star, noted on his discharge papers, never arrived.

For decades, he put it out of his mind. Then, last January, De George met a veterans advocate at the Disabled American Veterans post in Brooksville. The man urged De George to write to Nelson.

In May, one of the senator's aides called to say that the medal was ready. De George, his wife, Vera, and two daughters traveled to Sarasota, where Nelson held a town meeting. The aging veteran beamed with pride as he accepted the Bronze Star.

Back in Hudson, De George was asked what it means to him. He removed his glasses and began to cry.

"I just think of all the boys we lost. Good men, really."

He regained composure and reflected on his service. "I'm proud I served my county and did what I could do."

Debbie McGinley, 55, of Hudson, admires her father's selflessness.

"His whole generation was like that," she said Monday as her father sat for a photograph in the other room. "It wasn't to him above and beyond the call of duty. It was what he felt he needed to do. He had such courage at such a young age."

[Last modified July 5, 2004, 21:59:05]