George Andrew Nequette was born on 24 February 1908 in Browning, Glacier county, Montana to Charles and Sophia (Silverman) Nequette; he had four siblings and belonged to the Blackfoot Tribe. He married Alma Mastermind on 2 March 1935 but she died in 1937. He then married Ester Mae Shields on 10 November 1937. George registered for the draft on 16 October 1940 standing 5’5” tall, weighing 145 pounds with brown eyes and black hair; he had a scar on the right side of his body and was working for the Federal Government Irrigation Service. He enlisted on 16 March 1942 from Fort Lewis, Washington indicating he had carpentry experience.

PFC George Andrew Nequette (service number 39389504) served with the 109th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division when they landed in Normandy on 22 July 1944 to immediately be involved in Operation Cobra which was decisive in securing the Allied victory in Normandy. The division entered Paris on 29 August. The 109th crossed the Our River into Germany at the Siegfried Line, making it the first of the Allied armies to reach German soil. Beginning 19 September through the end of the year, the division suffered extremely heavy casualties; the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest was the longest continuous battle the US Army fought in WW II. The Battle of the Bulge began 16 December and the Army was able to throw off the enemy timetable before withdrawing on 22 December. On 19 January 1945, the division was at the northwest section of the Calmar Pocket in Kaysersberg Valley in bitterly cold conditions. By 2 February, the final organized German troops in Alsace were pushed back across the Rhine River. On 4 November 1945, the German army counterattacked. Fighting was savage, teetering back and forth. Some came to call the dense, snow-covered forest "Green Hell." Fighting and weather killed or injured nearly half of the 109th Regiment's nearly 3,000 men. It was on 7 November 1945 that PFC George Nequette gave his life; he rests in the Saint Michaels Cemetery, Browning, Montana.

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

SOURCES: Find-a-Grave; FamilySearch.org; Ancestry.com; Wikipedia

George A Nequette