After visiting the Bastogne War Museum in Belgium, I drove northeast to the Baugnez crossroads, site of the Malmedy Massacre. On December 17, 1944, a convoy of American troops in trucks was cut off and captured by a tank column of the 1st SS Panzer Division.
More than 100 American troops were herded from the trucks into a field near the crossroads. Nazi soldiers surrounded the Americans and opened fire with machine guns. when all of the Americans were dead or wounded, the SS troops walked among the bodies firing a headshot into any soldier who was not dead.
At this point in the Battle of the Bulge, the massacred Americans were behind enemy lines until January. As the battle turned in favor of the Americans, advancing soldiers saw the frozen bodies of their comrades left in the snow. Eventually 43 soldiers were discovered in hiding who escaped the massacre, but 84 American soldiers were dead.
There is a memorial at the roundabout at the Baugnez crossroads. The name of every American soldier killed is on the stone wall.
Veteran of four wars, four enlistments, four branches: Air Force, Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard. I am both an AF (Air Force) veteran and as Veteran AF (As Fuck)
Friday, November 15, 2019
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Has the Invasion Begun? No Ships at the South End of the Panama Canal
The view from the Amador Causeway. No ships at the south end of the Panama Canal. Just after midnight today I returned to Panama after two ...

-
Tasks, Conditions and Standards is how we learn to do everything in the Army. If you are assigned to be the machine gunner in a rifle squad...
-
On 10 November 2003 the crew of Chinook helicopter Yankee 2-6 made this landing on a cliff in Afghanistan. Artist Larry Selman i...
-
Senatus Populusque Romanus The Senate and People of Rome Some of the soldiers I served with in Iraq talked about getting an SPQR tat...