The wartime story of Bill Georgov is incredible.

He was just 18 years old, fresh out of high school on Nov. 12, 1944 when he stepped off an LST boat with hundreds of American soldiers in Le Havre France to begin fighting against the Germans in World War 2.

He was there to replace soldiers who had died in combat and relieve those who were frozen, tired, shell-shocked, injured, and battle weary.

Bill was in the 56th Infantry unit, Company A of the 12th Armored Division. His Infantry unit supported the 714th Tank Battalion, which my father-in-law Haig Derderian served in during the war. They fought together and likely knew each other.

The 12th Armored Division was famously known as The Hellcats, but it was also nicknamed The Mystery Division and eventually The Suicide Division by the Germans because of its ferocity, speed, and intensity.

I met 98-year-old Bill last summer at the 12th Armored Division’s 79th reunion in St. Louis. He attended with his daughter Luisa. In fact, when I arrived in St. Louis at the airport and headed to a shuttle bus to the St. Louis Sheraton Hotel, they were the first 2 people I met. Luisa and I helped Bill up to the bus, but he mostly charged up the stairs unaided. He was already smiling and cracking jokes. He was such a kind man, laughing, smiling, his eyes were bright and warm, and he excitedly talked to me and Luisa all the way to the hotel.

It was amazing that he was laughing and smiling after what he told me and wrote about of his experiences in the war.

“Statistics show that the average combat life of an infantry soldier is around ten minutes,” Bill wrote in a memoir, which was given to me by Luisa. “We should be dead at least eight times over, I, and about 11 other guys — those left of the original 150 men that hit Omaha Beach together, 12 out of 150.

“That’s the way it goes in the infantry, you never know who your next buddies will be. In this outfit they change quicker than you can change your socks!” he said.

He remembered a time shortly after he landed in Le Havre, France, when his sergeant went to his foxhole in the battlefield to check on him.

“At night when we’re in our foxholes our minds begin to wander. I remember my first night in a foxhole. I was a raw rookie, just off the boat and assigned to the infantry company. When the Sergeant came to look me over, I felt as though he was looking through me. He needed a man. He received a kid 18 years old — a kid just out of high school who had never fired a gun in his life, to replace a man who had died for his country!”

Bill fought on the front lines as a Private in the U.S. Army. Eventually, he was promoted to Private First Class, and then Corporal.

Born April 22, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, he was like any boy in the neighborhood. He played sports and went to Central High School and played football and baseball. His father ran a barber shop and Bill used to sweep out the hair and dust every night as an odd job.

But, just a few months after graduating from high school, Bill was using his U.S. Army helmet in France to heat a can of soup, boil water, and wash his clothes. He would wear his socks until they practically fell off, Luisa said.

“When they had to wash their clothes, they wore the wet clothes around their body to let them dry by their body heat since the outside air was so cold,” she said.

His first encounter with the Germans in battle was Dec. 16th, 1944. The 12th Armored Division moved rapidly and took Rimling, France, on Dec. 21st, and then liberated Utweiler after 4 days of fighting on Christmas Day.

That year, Bill, my father-in-law Haig and the rest of the soldiers of the 12th Armored Division celebrated Christmas on Dec. 26th, according to the Army’s after action reports.

He described being in a foxhole another time and what it was like surviving during the night.

“That night we went into combat. The biggest impression I got was that the imagination of the average person can make or break him in a foxhole,” he said. “During the day, you can control it by doing different things, by counting clouds, trees, or by improving your foxhole.

“But at night, imagination takes charge of your whole body. It can darn near make a man go crazy,” he wrote. “When the sun starts to disappear and night gradually comes on, you begin to look over the countryside, you look around to make sure you know all the landmarks, you try to remember where the trees are, where the rocks are and also where your buddies have dug in. For night is coming, and you will be alone! Alone with your thoughts and your imagination. As it begins to darken you can feel your hands begin to sweat and tremble. There is no controlling them. They are clammy, your face is soaking wet with perspiration. You grab your gun and hold it tight, so tight that your knuckles turn white.”

Things would begin to get quiet and Bill remembered that the prayer he said silently to himself sounded like it was coming over a public address system. The slightest noise that he or his fellow soldiers made was amplified by the Earth where they laid.

“Your heart is beating like a drum in a big brass band. Finally, night is here and the moon is out in its full brilliance. You don’t like the moon because it casts shadows — long shadows in which a man could crawl and get close enough to throw a hand grenade. So you sit in this total silence and strain your eyes trying to pierce the dark shadows,” he said. “Thoughts keep flashing in your mind. `Suppose I am rushed by more than four, then what?’

“You dismiss this fear by trying to think of something cheerful and by wondering who your relief is and hoping that he arrives on time,” he said.

“Now, the wind is picking up a little and the leaves begin to rustle in the breeze, bringing another worry,” he said. “With the leaves rustling and making noise, it is easier for the enemy to approach without being heard! So once again you lean a little forward, straining your ears a little more and hope that you don’t hear any strange sounds. After a few minutes of this, which seem like hours, you want to relax, but can’t. Your ears hurt, your eyes are sore from straining them and your hands hurt from gripping your rifle so tightly.

“You look at your watch: Only four more hours to go. Then your mind begins to wander again imagining the many things that could happen in the next four hours. You try to get away from your thoughts, but can’t. You look this way and that, do this and that with your hands, but your mind keeps working. Now you feel yourself getting completely wet with perspiration.”

On January 8th, 1945, the slaughter in Herrlisheim, France began. That’s when the 56th Infantry unit and 714th Tank Battalion met face-to-face with a large force of Nazi soldiers at the Zorn River in Rohrweiler, France, just outside of Herrlisheim. While U.S. forces tried to figure out how to cross a bridge that had been knocked out, German soldiers and artillery began pounding the Americans. Bill, Haig, and the rest of the U.S. soldiers had to retreat and take cover.

One of Haig’s friends in the Army, Don Nelson, who served with Haig in the 714th Tank Battalion, recalled in an article in the Annandale Advocate Newspaper in Annandale, MN: “Herrlisheim we’ll never forget,” Nelson told the newspaper, “because that’s where we took a beating.”  

U.S. Army intelligence suggested only a few Germans and tanks were in Herrlisheim. But it turned out to be a large infantry force of Nazis and a couple of tank battalions. The U.S. suffered heavy casualties.

As Bill’s 56th Infantry Unit and Haig’s 714th Tank Battalion moved along with them in tandem through France and eventually into Germany, fighting against the Nazis intensified.

“You can’t go Into the buildings because there are none left standing, only parts of them. At one time there were about 100 buildings in this town; now I doubt if you could put one building together with what’s left,” Bill wrote. “There are more holes in the ground than you can count. Every day it gets worse, shells coming in, none going out. We begin to feel like the man in a side show who has his head in a hole and is yelling, “Hit the man, win a doll”. Only this is for keeps — “Hit the man, win a medal!

“None of us expect to come out of this thing alive,” he continued. “How lucky can we be? No one can dodge bullets or shells forever.”

Bill wouldn’t be lucky forever. On March 23rd, 1945, he was wounded in Speyer, Germany. I’ll let him describe the scene.

“I was the lead scout and I was in the field when the explosion hit. I flew through the air, lost my grenades, ammunition belts, and helmet. I heard moaning. and someone yelled “Medic!” he recalled.

“I was very lucky. The man on my side lost his arm. A tree-burst hit us. I got hit on the right elbow, left thigh, and left shin (cracked bone),” he said.

Bill got treated for his injuries, pieced together, and eventually returned to duty where he, my father-in-law, Haig, and the rest of the 12th Armored Division took a bridgehead leading to Berchtesgaden, Germany (where Hitler had a second home) and on April 27th, 1945 they liberated two Nazi concentration camps in Landsberg, Germany, which were sub-camps of Dachau.

The 12th Armored Division’s official shoulder patch is featured in an exhibit in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. In 1988, the division was officially recognized as liberating the camps and the patch, at 3.375 inches in height and 3.875 inches in width, was given to the museum in 2004 to display for the world to see.

War was hard. But for 6 months until the war ended in May 1945, war was life for Bill Georgov and Haig Derderian.

“We had marched, fought, crawled, spit, and cursed our way across that old land for several months. All of us were battle weary, tired of fighting, but we knew that the end wasn’t near yet,” Bill recalled. “The Dutchmen fought back….This was not new to us. Every battle we got into meant loss of lives. If not in that battle, then in all probability our number would come up in the next.”

Fortunately Bill and Haig both survived and returned home from the war. Haig worked as an elementary school teacher in Michigan for 17 years and entertained thousands of people as a professional banjo player.

After the war, Bill married Concetta Maria Pulitano Georgov on June 24th, 1956 in Newark, New Jersey and they eventually moved to Delaware where he went to work for Dupont and then specialty products manufacturer J.M. Huber. He became involved in the local archery club in Newark, Delaware, and enjoyed photography. He took some woodworking classes and made some mailbox posts for his house and also was involved with the Delaware Glasgow Lions Club.

During the war, Bill received the the Purple Heart, French Legion of Honor, Bronze Star, Good Conduct, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign, and WWII Victory medals.

Bill’s story is just one of many that will be in my book that I am writing about my father-in-law Haig and his life in the 12th Armored Division as well as his life before and after the war. It will be published later this year.