He also keeps an assortment of genuine military flags displayed in his museum. He can tell you a story about each of the museum’s silent soldiers based on its uniform, equipment and medals.
The figures are dressed in American, German, British, Japanese, Canadian and New Zealand WWII-era military attire, all original uniforms Cone has obtained. The blank stares of more than 50 mannequins dressed as soldiers wearing authentic WWII helmets and uniforms, all standing or crouching in lifelike positions, greet guests.
Shoot point blank lewisville windows#
Mall shoppers stop and peek through the museum’s glass windows to glance at some of the historical pieces Cone displays inside. It had been in Dallas’ Valley View Mall.Ĭone, who worked in the oil industry, houses tons of artifacts, including uniforms, battle flags and a glass case filled with German military helmets, some that once belonged to soldiers in Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS. In 2017, he opened the Lest We Forget WWII Museum on the second floor of Music City Mall Lewisville, formerly called Vista Ridge Mall. “My job is to preserve the history, to teach the generations to tell the stories of what these men told me, so they won’t be forgotten,” Cone says. The 57-year-old has befriended several German and American soldiers over the years and has collected seemingly countless relics from the notorious war they fought. Cone, on the battlefield decades ago.įrom an early age, Cone was fascinated with WWII veterans. Cone says the president of the German paratrooper association shook his hand and told him, “This is your hand-to-hand combat badge for protecting us.”Ĭone had defended the men who fought his father, 2nd Lt. To show their appreciation, they awarded him a plaque engraved with German paratrooper wings. When the scuffle was over, Cone walked away with one of his eyes bloodied and bruised.Ĭone says the German veterans heard him scream English profanities and were shocked an American came to their defense. “I said, ‘What are you guys doing?' They said, ‘Get out of the way,’ and I said, ‘Hey, let these old men honor their dead in peace,’ and one of the guys grabbed me on the lapel of my suit coat and said, ‘I’m going to whip your ass.’ So he grabbed ahold of me, and I started pounding on his face.” “All of a sudden, you hear Germans approaching from behind a large bush area, and they are screaming ‘Mörder, mörder!’ which means murderers,” Cone says. The man who confronted him was one of about two dozen who ambushed the ceremony to protest the former Nazi soldiers’ gathering. Cone, who was 40 at the time, was at the cemetery to attend his first German World War II paratrooper reunion to honor fallen comrades.
As cold rain drizzled down on the cemetery in Braunschweig, Germany, a young man grabbed Dallas native George Cone by his coat and threatened to kick his ass.
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