Why Francis Sherman Currey Was The Scariest Soldier of WW2

So when I graduated high school, I was 17 years old. I enlisted in the army the next week just to get out of that town. The snow was red with blood. The German offensive tore through Belgium like a spear, and the men holding the line knew what happened to those who surrendered. Malmi had made that clear. In the middle of this chaos, one 19-year-old American private stayed behind on a narrow bridge, armed with little more than a bazooka and sheer defiance. He wasn’t a commander.
He wasn’t famous. And he wasn’t supposed to live through that day. They said tanks cannot operate in this terrain. And the most you’re going to get is a few infantrymen infiltrating. Well, it’s about 4:00 the next morning. Here come German tanks bumper to bumper. Yet somehow Francis Sherman Curry held the line.
But why did German SS troops known for their ruthlessness hesitate when they encountered him? Here’s why Francis Sherman Curry was the scariest soldier of World War II. A world on fire. December 1944. Europe was supposed to be winding down toward the end of the war. Allied forces had liberated France, pushed into Belgium, and were preparing to cross into Germany.
But Adolf Hitler had one last move, a massive counteroffensive meant to split the Allied front, capture the port of Antworp, and force a negotiated peace on German terms. It became known as the Battle of the Bulge, the largest and bloodiest battle fought by US forces in World War II. The Arden Forest, usually quiet in winter, exploded with gunfire and artillery.
Over 200,000 German troops backed by 1,000 tanks and assault guns slammed into unsuspecting American units. The weather worked in their favor. Fog and snow grounded Allied aircraft, cutting off the support troops had come to rely on. It was chaos. At the spearhead of this assault were the first SS Panzer Division.
These were not ordinary soldiers. They were battleh hardened Waffan SS troops infamous for their brutality. In earlier campaigns in Russia, the men earned the nickname Blowtorrch Battalion for their scorched earth tactics, burning villages and leaving nothing alive. They carried that same ruthless reputation into the Ardens.
On December 17th, 1944, that brutality came into full view at the Malmidy massacre. A convoy of American soldiers from the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion surrendered to Panzer Division men near Bony, Belgium. They expected captivity. Instead, they were herded into an open field and gunned down. 81 Americans were executed in cold blood.
Survivors who played dead later crawled away and reported the atrocity. The massacre shocked the Allied command. For the troops on the ground, it was a chilling message. Surrendering wasn’t an option. As the German advance pushed deeper into Belgium, American units were scattered, isolated, and low on supplies.
Many were cut off entirely, facing tanks with little more than rifles and machine guns. Some abandoned their posts in desperation. Others dug in, knowing there would be no reinforcements coming in time. In this hellish landscape, where survival meant holding ground against overwhelming odds, one young soldier from New York prepared to make his stand.
He wasn’t a commander or a tank ace. He was a private, a replacement, a teenager who’d barely seen combat. And in the days following Malm, he would do something that made German soldiers stop in their tracks. Something that would turn Francis Sherman Curry into one of the most unforgettable names of the war. Who was Francis Sherman Curry? Before the war turned him into a legend, Francis Sherman Curry was nearly invisible.
He wasn’t from a military family or a privileged background. He was born on June 29th, 1925 in the quiet town of Locksheldrake, New York. His life changed early. At just 12 years old, he was orphaned and placed in a children’s home. There was no road map to greatness for him, no early sign of the warrior he would become. When he enlisted in the US Army at 17, it wasn’t out of glory seeking.
Like many young men of his generation, he wanted to serve. He trained hard, learning the basics of infantry combat, rifle marksmanship, anti-tank weaponry, and small unit tactics. These were standard skills. What wasn’t standard was how quickly he absorbed them, retaining technical details that most recruits struggled to master.
By September 1944, Curry was sent to Europe as a replacement in the 30th Infantry Division, nicknamed Old Hickory. This division had already built a reputation as one of the hardest fighting units in the European theater. They’d stormed through Normandy and held off counterattacks in the Netherlands. Curry wasn’t joining green troops.
He was stepping into the ranks of veterans who had seen some of the war’s worst. For a 19-year-old who’d never fired a shot in combat, this could have been intimidating. But Curry’s fellow soldiers quickly noted his composure. He didn’t panic. He followed orders. He learned. Still, there was nothing about him that screamed hero.
He wasn’t tall or physically imposing. He wasn’t an officer. He didn’t make speeches or draw attention to himself. To anyone looking at him in December 1944, he was just another replacement, another name on the roster. But that’s what makes his story even more startling. In just a few months, this quiet young man would be thrust into one of the most chaotic moments of the war.
He wouldn’t just hold his ground. He would change the course of a battle. And he would do it with a level of calm and aggression that no one saw coming. The boy who had grown up with nothing was about to take on the most feared soldiers in Europe. and in Maldy they would learn his name. The Mdy assignment. By December 20th, 1944, the German offensive had carved deep into Allied lines.
The Ardens, once thought to be a quiet sector, was now a killing field. Town after town was falling to the relentless push of German armor and Waffan SS infantry. Amid this chaos, Malmdy, a small Belgian town near key road junctions, became a crucial defensive point. Whoever controlled it would control the flow of reinforcements and supplies.
If the Germans captured it, they’d have a direct path to further disrupt the American defense. The 30th Infantry Division was tasked with holding this ground, and one of its key positions was a bridge on the outskirts of Malmidy. It wasn’t just any bridge. It was a vital crossing that, if taken, would give German armor a straight path to roll deeper into Allied territory.
That’s where Private Francis Sherman Curry was posted on the morning of December 21st, 1944. It was bitterly cold. Snow and ice coated the roads, slowing vehicle movement, but giving tanks and infantry natural cover in the fog. Visibility was low. Communication lines were stretched thin.
The men stationed there knew that if a German force pushed across that bridge, they wouldn’t have much warning and they wouldn’t have many options for retreat. To make matters worse, the Malmdy massacre had happened only days earlier. Word had spread fast. Captured Americans weren’t being spared. The men on that line understood one thing clearly.
If the Germans came, they would be fighting to the last round. Curry was there with other infantrymen and supporting anti-tank crews. But the German advance had already been brutal. Anti-tank positions had been smashed. Units were withdrawing or being overrun. The enemy wasn’t just coming. They were coming with armor and momentum.
And then without warning, it began. German artillery opened up, pounding the area around the bridge. The air filled with the scream of shells. Soldiers dove for foxholes and ditches. It was the classic prelude to an armored assault. Soften the defenses, then roll in the tanks. Curry didn’t panic. He watched through the smoke and debris.
He spotted movement. A German tank emerging from the haze, edging its way toward the bridge. Then another. Most soldiers would have stayed in cover, waiting for orders. Curry didn’t. He grabbed his Browning automatic rifle and aimed at the tank commander visible in the turret. One clean burst. The Germans slumped out of sight.
The tank rolled forward anyway. Curry knew this was only the beginning. The bridge wouldn’t hold by itself, and if no one acted, Malmdy would fall. The day everything broke. December 21st, 1944. The bridge at Malm was about to be swallowed whole. The artillery didn’t stop. It intensified. German shells ripped into American positions, throwing dirt, snow, and bodies into the air.
It wasn’t random fire. It was deliberate, a textbook prelude to armor rolling in for the kill. Through the haze, more tanks emerged. The first one Curry had engaged was just the spearhead. Behind it, at least three more tanks and supporting infantry were advancing. These weren’t scattered units. This was a coordinated SS push. Curry knew what that meant.
If they took the bridge, the entire defensive sector would collapse. And in that moment, something clicked. He wasn’t going to wait for reinforcements. There likely were none anyway. He wasn’t going to hunker down and hope for survival. He was going to fight. Curry sprinted from his position through open ground under machine gun fire, heading for a barn where a bazooka was stored.
He wasn’t alone. Another soldier helped him load it, but Curry was the one who stepped up to fire. He aimed at the tank and squeezed the trigger. The bazooka round slammed into the tank, hitting near the turret and disabling it. Smoke hissed from the impact as the vehicle rolled back, retreating out of the line of fire. One down.
But that wasn’t the end. Three more tanks were coming. For most soldiers, that would have been the moment to retreat. But Curry wasn’t like most soldiers. He spotted an abandoned American anti-tank position nearby. It was risky. German fire was raking the area, but Curry ran toward it, searching for anything he could use. He found it.
Anti-tank grenades. Crawling and sprinting through bursts of enemy fire, he got close enough to lob the grenades at the advancing tanks. With the first grenade, he disabled one tank. With the second, he forced another tank to pull back. And by the third grenade tank was abandoned entirely by its crew. In a matter of minutes, one lone private had halted an armored advance meant to crush an entire defensive position.
And still, Curry wasn’t done. While he was fighting the tanks, he spotted five wounded American soldiers stranded near a disabled halftrack. They were pinned by machine gun fire, unable to move. Without hesitation, Curry crawled across the road under enemy fire, dragging each man to safety. Once they were clear, Curry returned, not to retreat, but to fight.
He climbed onto the wrecked halftrack, commandeered its mounted 50 caliber machine gun, and laid down a relentless stream of fire, forcing German infantry to scatter. By the time the smoke cleared, the Germans had been pushed back. The bridge was still in American hands, and Francis Sherman Curry was still standing. But the battle for Malm wasn’t over.
The Germans would come back, and the quiet 19-year-old from New York wasn’t finished showing them just how dangerous one soldier could be. The impossible stand. Francis Sherman Curry should have been dead. By every calculation, a lone private with a Browning, a bazooka, and a handful of grenades should not have been able to stand against a coordinated Waffan SS armored assault.
Yet, for reasons that would puzzle even the enemy, he did. The bridge was still contested. The Germans weren’t retreating completely. They were regrouping. Infantry dug in, taking up firing positions. Tanks edged cautiously, avoiding the killing ground where Curry had wrecked their advance. But Curry wasn’t just holding the line.
He was dictating the fight. After clearing the bridge with anti-tank grenades, he repositioned himself, crawling back toward the disabled halftrack where he’d mounted the 50 caliber machine gun. With the weapon stabilized, Curry unleashed controlled bursts at German infantry, pinning them down and cutting off their support for the remaining tanks.
It wasn’t wild shooting. It was precise, deliberate suppression. The Germans responded with heavy fire. Bullets chewed into the wreckage around him. Mortar rounds landed close enough to rattle his teeth. Any normal soldier would have abandoned that position. Curry stayed, and when the machine gun overheated and jammed, he didn’t stop.
He switched to his Browning automatic rifle, pouring fire into German positions until they were forced to withdraw deeper into cover. But the SS weren’t done. They had tanks still capable of pushing through. And if they coordinated one more strong assault, the bridge and the men behind it would fall. Curry made sure that didn’t happen.
Moving with an almost mechanical calm, he scavenged Panzer Fousts, German singleshot anti-tank weapons left behind by retreating infantry. Using the enemy’s own weapons, he stalked the field, firing at the remaining armor with unnerving precision. The effect was devastating. Crews abandoned their tanks rather than risk being blown apart.
The advance sputtered and died. By this point, Curry had done more than hold his ground. He had single-handedly broken the momentum of an SS offensive, a feat that would normally require a coordinated squad or an anti-tank team. And he did it under constant fire at just 19 years old. When the shooting finally stopped, the bridge was still in American hands.
The five wounded men Curry had rescued were alive and the German assault had been blunted. It was over, at least for now. For his actions that day, Curry was later recommended for and awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration the United States can bestow. But even medals can’t fully capture what happened at Malmid.
This wasn’t simply one soldier doing his duty. This was one soldier redefining what was possible on a battlefield. And the truth of why the Germans hesitated, why they pulled back instead of overwhelming him, wouldn’t become clear until much later. A hero nobody saw coming. When the smoke finally cleared, the bridge at Malm was still in American hands. German armor had retreated.
The wounded men Curry had dragged to safety were alive. And somehow the quiet, wiry private who had manned that position was still standing. To the men who witnessed it, the scale of what Curry had done was hard to comprehend. He had acted alone with no orders, improvising in real time.
He had faced waffen SS troops, men infamous for their ruthlessness, and forced them back. It wasn’t luck, it wasn’t chance. It was deliberate, calculated action that had stopped a German advance dead in its tracks. In the immediate days following the battle, Curry’s story spread through his unit. He wasn’t a loud or boastful man, but the men around him knew what they’d seen.
Word reached his commanders quickly. By March 1945, his company commander had formally recommended him for the Medal of Honor, citing his extraordinary heroism and decisive action in the face of overwhelming odds. On July 27th, 1945, near Rams, France, Curry was presented the Medal of Honor by Major General Leland Hobbes, commander of the 30th Infantry Division.
The official ceremony followed in August after the fall of Berlin. But the honors didn’t stop there. In addition to the Medal of Honor, Curry received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Three Purple Hearts, and Belgium’s Order of Leopold. His own division commander wasn’t the only one impressed. General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, reportedly told Curry that his actions at Malcid had shortened the war by 6 weeks, a staggering assessment of the impact one soldier could have on the battlefield. Yet, despite the accolades, Francis Sherman Curry didn’t act like a war hero. He didn’t seek the spotlight.
After the war, he joined the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albany, working quietly as a counselor to other veterans. He later ran a landscaping business and eventually worked in hotel convention planning in Myrtle Beach. He never bragged. He rarely spoke about what happened. To the world, he was a decorated soldier.
But to those who faced him at Malmid, he was something far more unsettling. The Waffan SS who met him on that bridge didn’t just lose tanks or men. They lost their nerve. But why? Why did hardened German soldiers hesitate against a single 19-year-old private? The answer would reveal why Francis Sherman Curry wasn’t just brave, he was terrifying.
Why Francis Sherman Curry was the scariest soldier of World War II? So why did Waffan SS tank crews, elite battleh hardened soldiers, hesitate? Why did they pull back from one bridge held by a single 19-year-old private? Because Francis Sherman Curry didn’t fight like one man. On that day at Malmidy, he created the illusion of a larger force.
The rapid, precise way he moved, switching positions, scavenging weapons, and striking from unexpected angles made the enemy believe they were walking into a coordinated ambush. They weren’t. It was just Curry. But in war, perception can be more powerful than reality. Most infantrymen stayed pinned down under tank and machine gun fire.
Curry did the opposite. He ran at the enemy. He fired bazookas at close range. He used captured panzer fousts, weapons designed for German hands, and turned them against their owners. This wasn’t reckless courage. It was psychological warfare. To the Germans, his actions didn’t make sense, and soldiers fear what they can’t predict.
That day, he fought like an entire unit. Curry’s ability to transition between roles, anti-tank specialist, machine gunner, medic rescuing wounded men created confusion. The SS didn’t know how many Americans they were really facing. Was this a squad, a platoon, reinforcements? They couldn’t tell.
That uncertainty slowed their advance and forced them to retreat. While panic was spreading amongst the Germans, Curry was aggressive but calm. In a firefight where any wrong move meant instant death, he acted with surgical precision. That kind of composure under fire is unnerving to any opponent. It makes them wonder.
What does he know that we don’t? Suddenly the enemy was the ones feeling scared. German SS troops thrived on intimidation. Massacres like Malmidy were designed to terrorize their foes. But at that bridge, they were on the receiving end. Curry’s aggression, his refusal to retreat, and his effectiveness with improvised weapons made them hesitate.
In combat, hesitation is fatal. This combination, adaptability, fearlessness, and psychological manipulation made Francis Sherman Curry terrifying to face. He wasn’t a berserker blindly charging tanks. He was a hunter, calmly dismantling one of the deadliest fighting forces of the war piece by piece.
That’s what separates him from other heroes of World War II. He didn’t just survive the impossible. He made the enemy believe they were outmatched by a ghost. That’s why Francis Sherman Curry wasn’t merely brave. He was the scariest soldier of World War II. a lone private who shattered the confidence of an elite SS division and left them wondering what exactly they had just faced.
Legacy of a ghost. When Francis Sherman Curry left the battlefield, he didn’t bring the war with him. Unlike many Medal of Honor recipients who became public figures, Curry chose a quieter path. After leaving active duty in 1946, he dedicated his life to helping others. There were no speaking tours, no memoirs, no fanfare.
Yet, his legend only grew. The men who had been there knew what they saw. A one-man stand that saved lives and stalled a German advance. For them, Curry wasn’t just another soldier. He was the reason they made it home. His recognition extended beyond medals. In addition to the Medal of Honor, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Three Purple Hearts, and the Order of Leopold from Belgium, Curry’s story became part of military study programs, showing future soldiers how adaptability and psychological dominance can change the course of a battle. He even became
the first Medal of Honor recipient to be immortalized as a G.I. Joe action figure, introducing his story to younger generations who might otherwise never learn his name. His real life actions were also adapted into scenarios for video games like Medal of Honor, turning his battlefield improvisation into teachable moments of tactical brilliance.
But Curry himself never saw any of it as extraordinary. In his mind, he was just doing his job, protecting his fellow soldiers, holding his ground. He passed away on October 8th, 2019 at the age of 94. The quiet, unassuming man who had once single-handedly stopped a Waffen SS advance died peacefully in New York, far from the frozen bridge where his legend was born.
His story is more than a tale of wartime heroism. It’s a reminder of what makes a soldier truly terrifying to his enemies. It isn’t rage. It isn’t brutality. It’s the ability to remain calm, adapt under pressure, and turn fear back on those who would wield it. On that day in Malmi, Francis Sherman Curry became something the Germans couldn’t understand.
A lone ghost who fought like an entire army. And that is why his name still carries weight. Not because he wanted to be remembered, but because no one who faced him could ever forget that he was the scariest soldier of World War II. Do you think a single soldier like Francis Sherman Curry could have this kind of impact in modern warfare today? or was he a product of a different kind of war? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for watching.