Paris 1945: An Aggie’s account of Muster

One of the largest Aggie Musters ever held outside the United States took place in Paris as the end of World War II was coming into sight.

More than 250 Aggies gathered April 21, 1945, in Paris, which Allied forces had liberated from the Nazis eight months earlier. Germany’s surrender was imminent (it would end the war in Europe less than three weeks later, on May 8).

All around the world, thousands of Aggies gathered at more than 600 Musters that year.

Here is one Aggie’s path to the Paris 1945 Muster.

George Williams ’44 was a sophomore at Texas A&M when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the U.S. entered the war. During his junior year, the wartime film “We’ve Never Been Licked” was filmed on campus, and Williams appeared as an extra, meeting his date for a Corps dance at the Aggieland Inn.

Williams recalled in a 2004 interview that for filming the dance scenes, the Aggieland Orchestra would play a little music to get everyone dancing, then the music would stop and the extras were to keep dancing silently — in bare feet, and pretending to talk and smile — while the actors said their lines.

In May 1943, Williams and his Aggie classmates took a train to start their journey to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where they were commissioned into the Army. Williams became a radio officer, shipped out to England and arrived in France 18 days after the D-Day invasion in June 1944.

At Omaha Beach, Normandy, an Aggie colonel sent for him and got his address; this was Col. John G. Swope, Class of 1917, who told Williams that he was going to see to it that an Aggie Muster was held “somewhere important” in April.

Sure enough, when April 21 approached, Williams got orders to Paris to attend the Muster. Williams drove a jeep more than 200 miles to Paris from Seckenheim, Germany, where he had been setting up a radio station. “My face was really wind-burned” after the journey in the open jeep, he wrote.

At a hotel where Army brass were quartered, more than 250 Aggies gathered in the basement to conduct their Muster. Williams recalled in 2004 that everyone signed a roster of attendance, and each class took group photos. Afterwards, copies of the photos were sent to attendees.

Williams would next be sent to Marseilles, where he boarded a transport ship set to carry troops to the Pacific — but Japan’s surrender came in time to re-route the ship, and they were taken to Boston instead, where hundreds of people lined the waterfront, cheering their arrival.

He returned to Texas A&M, finished his degree in accounting and worked as a certified public accountant in San Antonio, where he married Vernice Flowers. They had four children, including Aggie bandsman George “Mac” Williams, Jr. ’70, and lived in San Antonio, where George Williams, Sr. passed away in 2005. Their grandchildren include George Christopher Williams ’99 and Casey Tropp ’04.