(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)
On this date in 1945, in Le Mans, France, Pvt. George Green Jr. of the 998th Quartermaster Salvage Collecting Company was hanged for the murder of his corporal the previous year.
Green was married, with one child.
The story of Corporal Tommie Lee Garrett’s senseless death began with a urine can. The soldiers of the platoon used a can at night rather than venture out into the open to answer nature’s call, and at 7:30 a.m. on November 18, 1944, Green knocked the can over accidentally. Corporal Garrett grabbed him by the shirt collar and told him to clean up the mess.*
Green stewed over what happened for the next hour and was heard to mutter darkly that he was “going to get” someone. At 8:30, as everyone was at a salvage dump sorting clothes, Green calmly raised his M1 carbine and fired it at Garrett’s chest from twelve feet away. The corporal was struck in the heart and died within minutes.
The incident was totally uncharacteristic of Green. He had a reputation as a good, efficient soldier who didn’t cause trouble. His supervisor from his civilian job (he’d been a janitor at a factory in Texarkana, Texas) submitted a sworn statement as to his good character. He had one prior court-martial for being drunk and disorderly but no other convictions in either military or civilian life.
Nevertheless, there were no mitigating circumstances in the case: Green had shot his victim in cold blood, without provocation, while he was stone cold sober. Even though he claimed he hadn’t intended to kill Corporal Garrett, there could only be one punishment.
In his final statement before he was hanged, Green said, “A person has no fear of death if he is right with God. Death is an honor. Jesus died for a crime he did not commit. I really did a crime, a bad crime.”
He’s buried at the American Military Cemetery at Oise-Aisne, along with the poet Joyce Kilmer and Eddie Slovik, the last American soldier ever executed for desertion.
* We’ve seen overturned urine cans lead to the gallows before.
On this day..
- 1920: Four denunciators of Laon
- 1903: Victoriano Lorenzo, cholo
- 1863: Zygmunt Padlewski, January Uprising rebel
- Daily Double: Hameln after the war
- 1946: Ten at Hameln for killing Allied POWs
- 1815: William Sawyer, guns and roses
- 1702: Dick Bauf, executioner of his parents
- 1863: William Francis Corbin and Thomas Jefferson McGraw
- 2012: Majid Jamali Fashi
- 1976: Lt. Col. Bukar Dimka and six coup confederates
- 71 B.C.E.: The followers of Spartacus
- 1381: Eppelein von Gailingen
- 1916: Jesse Washington lynched after conviction