Remembering George Jagger
In March of this year, just before widespread pandemic lockdowns began, the Connecticut Early Music Society lost a longstanding supporter and Trustee, George Jagger. George’s was a long and rich American life. This remembrance was written by Robert P. Anderson, Jr.
George J. Jagger was born on June 19, 1923 and grew up in Methuen, Massachusetts. After graduating from Edward F. Searles High School in 1941, he hoped to hear from either Harvard or Yale, and set off on an auspicious college career.
He had graduated as salutatorian of his class with the then-traditional preparation of languages, math, sciences, and literature and hoped for acceptance at either … or both. Though it was to be both, he chose Yale because it was a little farther from home, offering a little more independence for the future. But three months after starting his freshman year, the world changed.
Classes in New Haven were accelerated after December 7th; George pressed forward, and he finished his sophomore year in January 1943 and joined the army as an enlisted man. So, with a decent mastery of French, surely he aspired to be an officer? “No,” he says emphatically, “I did not! Of course I was an enlisted man – and I stayed that way!”
Mustered in at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, he was packed off to Camp Sibert in Gadsden, Alabama to learn all about chemical warfare. “It was my first experience in the South,” he smiles wryly, “and there were many customs I was unfamiliar with.” He was soon selected for the Army Specialized Training Program at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri and Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and was then shipped back north to Boston College – “that Jesuit school,” quips the lifelong Episcopalian – where he was immersed in German-language classes.
“But” he remarks, “time went by swiftly. After D-Day, the Army decided that it needed ‘just plain soldiers,’ so I was assigned to a Combat Engineer Battalion to drive 6x6 trucks!” A badly scalded foot during a barracks inspection landed him in the infirmary, where the corpsman attending him (a Harvard man, George points out) urged him to switch to the Medical Corps, and then helped him make the transition to a medical T-5 Corporal in the 280th Combat Engineering Battalion.
The 280th was moved to Glastonbury, England in the summer of 1944; in December, it was shipped to France, moving rapidly to participate in the Ardennes Counteroffensive – the Battle of the Budge – where, George says with characteristic understatement, there were “quite serious casualties.”
He was now attached to the 168th Combat Engineers, which was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre, he remembers, for its role at the Bulge. “In the Ardennes,” George recalls, “it was just cold. I didn’t have a shower for a month, and there was lice control, trench foot, and all that sort of stuff – not a pleasant experience! The unit fought all the way to Bastogne and Luxembourg, then joined General Patton’s Third Army for the push along the Rhine.”
“We lost quite a lot of soldiers crossing the Rhine at Sankt Goar, Germany, and I can give you quite a sour assessment of that,” he says somberly, recalling that the Germans had set up enfilading fire which “mowed down Americans” attempting the crossing. His corpsman work at the crossing earned him the Bronze Star medal for, he says, “hauling soldiers out of the Rhine and trying to keep them alive.” That was “just before Franklin Roosevelt died” on April 12, 1945.
On another occasion, George was standing with three officers when an enemy shell suddenly exploded nearby, leaving the officers either dead or mortally wounded and George with a small cut on his chin. He dealt with survivor’s guilt for the rest of his life.
After that, his unit moved “quite speedily” across Germany to the Czech border until the ceasefire, he said, encountering the “pretty grim … rather grim,” liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 4. He collected photos taken by GIs and years later passed them on to become part of the Holocaust Museum. Eisenhower visited the camp on April 12 and in a dispatch said, “The things I saw beggar description.”
George received some good news after the ceasefire on May 8, he said. Chiefly, he was not going to be immediately sent to Japan! He had scored high on a points system – 88 – which acknowledged the severe action that he’d seen, so while in uniform he transferred to the University of Grenoble to study French literature. As it turns out, he ended up lecturing on American literature there, as well as doing “quite a lot of skiing at Chamonix and Alpe d’Huez, before moving to the Sorbonne and enjoying more French civilization.”
After leaving the Army in May 1946, he spent an “interesting” summer living in Boston. Then it was back to New Haven in the fall, sharing experiences and reacclimating to the academic life, all the while enjoying Yale’s Elizabethan Club (known fondly as “the Lizzy”). He graduated from Yale in 1948 (keeping his original class of 1945 affiliation) and continued in Yale’s graduate school in comparative literature until 1953. After graduating, he spent 25 years in banking in New York, emerging after as a vice-president with Chase Manhattan.
To care for his widowed, elderly mother, George retired to the New London area. Upon his arrival, he generously shared his banking and financial talents with a number of the area’s charitable organizations: St. James Episcopal Church and Pequot Chapel (for which he funded a new roof and entrance ramp, later doing the same for the Thames Club); the Alliance for Living and the AIDS Council; the New London Water Commission; and the Connecticut Early Music Society, which he served as Treasurer for several years. At the age of 86, he was even considered a downtown New London hipster…
George died on March 11, 2020. It was a privilege to know him from the Tuesday lunches at the Thames Club, which he always attended when he was able.
Well into his nineties, he was a witty, respected contributor to the discussions that frequently centered around the latest books read. He commanded the seat at the head of the Member’s Table that still holds his cushion. George would never tell you of his service during WWII, his education or his career unless you were able to get him off to the side and he was in a reflective mood that day. He was a gentleman and a very humble hero. In its October 2019 concert at the Thames Club, the Yale Whiffenpoofs dedicated their traditional theme song to George that night:
“To the tables down at Mory’s,
To the place where Louie dwells
To the dear old Temple bar we love so well
Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled, with their glasses raised on high
And the magic of their singing casts its spell…”