Born and bred in rural South Dakota, George Moe graduated from West Point and became a tank commander for General Patton’s Third Army. He was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge.
During the Occupation of Germany, Moe was certified as a specialist in the German language, receiving a diploma from the University of Heidelberg. He and wife Eleanore got in on the Nuremberg Trials.
A West Point tribute especially details his combat during the soon-to-follow Korean War at the deadly-cold Chosin Reservoir, as US Forces fought for their lives: “Fighting the fanatic Chinese at the infamous Chosin Reservoir, he became one of the 3,000 members of ‘The Chosin Few.’
“He reminisced: ‘The steep, rugged Taeback Mountains of the Chosin Reservoir in December were an area where at one time Hell was located, but the Devil got disgusted and moved out!’ George, with elements of a X Corps CIC detachment, was sent forward into the 7th Division task force a day or two before the Chinese Army attacked in mass. He and his depleted group escaped aboard a Russian river boat by moving up-river toward the east coast where they disembarked and by what route they fought their way south through enemy forces and bitter weather we do not know. After some three weeks, the survivors reached X Corps command post in time for an unforgettable Christmas meal.”
After receiving his Ph.D in International Relations from American University, Moe returned to South Dakota in 1966 to become head of SDSM&T’s Languages and Social Sciences Department. He died in 2007.
You are invited to hear wife Eleanore Moe talk about what it was like to be a military spouse in Occupied Germany and what she remembers of her husband’s wartime experiences and his years at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology until 1983, she herself teaching high school. At Ellsworth Air Force Base’s South Dakota Air and Space Museum, she will speak on Saturday, August 12, starting at 9 am.
