THE US FIRST ARMY FORGOTTEN HEROES OF WW2; Malmedy Massacre CHAPTER 8

Malmedy Massacre

To the north, units of the 6^th SS Panzer Army Kampfgruppe Peiper made up of 4,800 men and 600 vehicles under the command of Waffen SS Colonel Joshen Peiper had advanced west into Belgium and at 0700 hours in December 17 had captured a US fuel dump at Bullingen. Further south, Hasso Von Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army crossed the Our River and attacked the key centers of St Vith and Bastogne. German tanks seized the surrounding villages. Advancing west ward, at 1230 hours near the village of Baugnez half way between Malmedy and Ligneuville, they encountered a unit of the American 285^th Field artillery observation battalion, who were seized after a brief exchange of gunfire. The prisoners together with some others captured earlier numbered about 150.  Meanwhile the advancing Panzer Grenadiers had handed over the American prisoners, who were sent to stand in a field on a cross road to be handed over to a group of rear guard SS detachment.

 Here while standing in the field, they were herded round and machine gunned by the SS detachment meant to oversee them in a callous act that came to be known as the Malmedy massacre. Some of the survivors were able to escape into the neighboring forest. In all over 84 men were killed.

 The escaping prisoners took the news to the Allied lines where the news of the shooting spread like wildfire, caused consternation and ultimately stiffened resistance to the advance. The news that the Germans were not taking prisoners alive, though ultimately not true; as this incident and one other massacre seemed to suggest, nevertheless had a dramatic effect on the retreating and demoralized American forces. The battle as a result now took on the ferocity of the fight to the deaths which American forces were more familiar with in the Pacific theater.

The Americans subsequently took revenge in shooting scores of German prisoners particularly the SS fallschirmjagen (paratroopers). The news of the prisoners- killing subsequently stiffened the fighting spirit of the American soldiers who now believed that surrendering was no longer a viable option. No SS soldier was guaranteed his safety any more in American captivity and few Americans thereafter were willing to be taken prisoner, to the ultimate detriment of the German advance in the Battle of the Bulge.

The subsequent advance of the Sixth SS Panzer Army encountered much stiffer resistance as the Germans approached positions of the US 99^th Infantry Division who put up a stiff fight in spite of the fact that the men were green. The prisoner shooting incident stiffened the fighting spirit of the soldiers and the German advance began to encounter stiff bottlenecks as the Americans denied them gains at every road block, villages, hamlets, destroying bridges, fuel dumps and anything that could aid the German advance.

When the German advance reached Stavelot, they were far behind schedule as they took thirty six hours to accomplish in 1944 what took them only nine hours to accomplish in the same advance in 1940. Eleven black soldiers were also shot by the 1^st SS Division under Kampfgruppe Hungen but due to paucity of evidence, this massacre went largely unpublicized and unavenged.

Before the battle of the Bulge, colored soldiers in the US army were not assigned to combat duties but served only as stevedores, truck drivers and in logistics support. The paucity of fighting men at the height of this battle and the desperate need for re-enforcements at the front coupled with the inability of the training schools back in the US to meet the increasing need of trained replacements for combat duties finally persuaded General Eisenhower to issue orders authorizing willing colored units to participate in combat duties.

 In many instances cooks, medics, drivers and other non-combatants were drafted into the fight to stem the German advance as the need arose particularly in the early days of the attack when the Allied lines were dangerously stretched to a breaking point. The performance of the colored soldiers was not perceived as any much different from that of the regular G.I’s.

If anything they were overly enthusiastic about the opportunity given to them to engage in regular combat and correct the negative stereo types concerning colored troops generally. Colored units thereafter were generally albeit grudgingly allowed to fight in the frontlines in WW2 in the European theater of Operation even though the units remained strictly segregated along racial lines.

However colored troops taken as prisoners stood the greater risk of being shot by the racially murderous SS units and it is believed that the fate that befell the eleven black soldiers taken prisoners and shot was racially inspired.

Sixth Panzer Army’s assault on Stavelot on December 18^th  encountered bitter resistance from the American defenders who were ready to fight to the death, the Malmedy Massacre being at the back of every soldiers involved in the battle. Peiper unable to breach the American defenses in spite of his heavily armored columns left a small support force at the front and detoured to the bridge at Trois – Parte, where the retreating American Engineers had already destroyed the bridge. He subsequently went off to the village of La Gleize and from there to Stormount where the bridge was blown up in his face by the American defenders.

With his troops trapped behind the American lines as the Americans recaptured Stavelot on December 19, the Sixth Panzer Army decided to pull back to La Gleize to await a German relief force which never materialized. With no relief force able to penetrate the strongly held American lines, the Germans on December 23^rd were forced to escape on foot through the Allied lines back to Germany thereby abandoning all their vehicles and heavy equipments.

In St Vith, elements of the US First Army’s 7^th Armored Division, including one regiment of the US 106^th Infantry Division as well as elements of the US 9^th Armored Division and the US 28^th Infantry Division all under the command of General Bruce C Clarke set up a road block that successfully resisted the attacks of Manteuffel’s 5^th Panzer Army and Sepp Dietrich’s Sixth Panzer Army; thereby slowing the German advance at critical points.

Under heavy pressure, the US forces defending St Vith were ordered to give up and withdraw to prepared defensive positions nearby where they were entrenched in a dogged defense. By December 23^rd, with their flanks shattered by the German armored assaults, the defenders were withdrawn to a point west of the Salk River. Meanwhile the German attack had fallen behind schedule and was daily losing the momentum as the American defenses stiffened.

Lt General George S Patton, meanwhile ordered to reinforce the defenses of the First Army and relieve Bastogne by Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D Eisenhower had committed Three Corps of his Third Army to the operation with the 4^th Armored Division under direct orders to relieve the 101^st Airborne Division encircled in Bastogne by the German Army.

On December 20^th General Eisenhower detached the US First and Ninth Armies from Lt General Omar N Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group and placed them under the command of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s British 21^st Army Group. It was a decision that left Bradley bitter and resentful over the depletion of his command even though it was obvious that he had been struggling to direct his splintered armies from across the northern end of the Bulge.

By December 21^st, German forces had Bastogne surrounded on all sides and in spite of repeated attacks could not take the town. With the Americans low on ammunition and medical supplies, their position was dire. The German commander now sent an emissary to induce the acting commander of the 101^st Airborne Division Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe to surrender.

 In a moment of irritation and annoyance he uttered ‘nuts’ which was dutifully transcribed and sent to the German commander as the reply by his bewildered staff officers. The commander of the 101^st Airborne Division, Major General Maxwell Taylor was meanwhile on an official engagement in Washington when his Division was called to action in Bastogne.

The American officers meanwhile had to explain the meaning of ‘nuts’ to the German representative as meaning a categorical no to the German surrender request. The subsequent German artillery barrage, though heavy and sustained and for many American soldiers, the heaviest and most sustained they had ever been through, still failed to induce surrender. The subsequent German attacks, ferocious though they were, were unable to breach the Bastogne perimeter in spite of the fact that McAuliffe’s command post was almost overrun at a time.

Meanwhile by the 23^rd of December the clouds had begun to break, enabling the Allied Air Force to take to the skies the next day. Thereafter rocket-firing American P-47 Republic fighters as well as Mustang P-51 fighters began to hit the German armored and motorized columns forcing the Germans to seek the protection of secondary roads as relief from the air attacks as well as to out flank the American road blocks.

 These all helped to slowdown and eventually bog down the German advance which was also increasingly being slowed by fuel shortages as there were fewer and fewer available fuel dumps as the Allies either relocated or destroyed the existing fuel dumps as they retreated.

Meanwhile Field Marshal Montgomery ordered all available British units within the vicinity of the Meuse River Crossings, whether combat or non-combat units to head to the Meuse bridge crossings and secure them from the impending German advance and efforts at crossing the River. Even the British 29^th armored Brigade which had just turned in its tanks for refitting was ordered to take back the tanks and head to the River crossings alongside XXX corps.

By December 24^th Allied Air power began to take its toll on the German columns while Bastogne was resupplied with food, medicine and ammunition from the air. The Allied fighter bombers also began to hit the German supply trucks with devastating effect.  The combined effect of all these was that the spearhead of the German advance practically ground to a halt a few miles short of the Meuse River at the best instance.

 With the German supply lines stretched to a breaking point, Allied fighter bombers harassing the supply trucks, and tanks beginning to run out of fuel, and the Meuse River crossings effectively held by Allied troops, the German attack ran out of steam, and the momentum began to shift in the Allies’ favor.

On December 24^th Hasso Von Manteuffel viewing the dire strategic situation, sent a message to Hitler through his military adjutant advising that all offensive operations be suspended along with a withdrawal back to the West Wall. Hitler rejected the advice. Meanwhile elements of Patton’s Third Army namely the hard fighting 37^th tank battalion of the 4^th Armored Division had broken through the German lines and made contact with American troops in Bastogne at 1650 hours on 26^th of December ending the siege of Bastogne.

 By January 1 in a bid to kick start the offensive that had ground to a halt, the German Luftwaffe sent in hundreds of planes in a last ditch effort to destroy Allied Air power, attacking and destroying  on the ground hundreds of Allied war planes, over 465 aircraft in total. Meanwhile the Luftwaffe sustained over 275 irreplaceable losses some to Allied fighters, but mostly to Allied anti- air craft guns set up to track and destroy the V – I flying bombs.

On the same day Army Group G launched an operation against the lines of the US Seventh Army in the south code-named Operation Nordwind which seriously hurt the men and forces of the Franco-American 7^th Seventh Army and forced them to retreat to defensive positions on the south bank of the Mode River on January 21.

 At a time Strasbourg seemed to be in danger of falling once more to the Germans to the great alarm of the French government as General Eisenhower briefly considered abandoning the city in the face of the unrelenting German attacks. It took the heroic defense efforts of the French units of the 7^th Army to save the city.

The German attack finally petered out by January 15^th but with a bulge extending dangerously into the Allied center. The Allies decided to counterattack to reduce and if possible cut off the Germans caught in the bulge. For this reason on January 1, Patton’s Third Army was ordered to attack the salient from the south while Montgomery was ordered to cut off the bulge from the north in a pincer movement designed to entrap and capture the German forces in the bulge.

While Patton promptly initiated his attack on the 1^st of January, Montgomery held off his attacks until January 3 in order to complete his preparations by which time the German forces sensing the danger began desperately to retreat to escape the entrapment even without most of their vehicles and heavy equipment. By January 7^th, Adolf Hitler finally decided to call off the offensive and withdraw his force back to their start line. The two tips of the Allied pincer movements finally closed on January 15^th and the battle of the Bulge was officially over.

Official German losses including dead, wounded and prisoners of war were over 100,000 while The Americans sustained over 89,000 casualties including 19,000 confirmed dead with over 48,000 listed as wounded or missing. The Allies lost over 730 tanks while The Germans lost over 600 tanks. The fact was that while the Allies could replace their losses, the Germans could not replace theirs including the 30 reserve divisions that had been held back in Germany to contain the impending Soviet winter offensive.

 When the Soviet armies launched their offensive on January 12, there were practically no German reserves to stop the Soviet drive that carried 300 kilometers all the way from the Vistula River in Poland to the Elbe River in East Prussia, 60 kilometers or one hour drive away from Berlin in early February 1945.  Hitler’s gamble had failed, opening the road to Berlin to the Allies and the US First Army characteristically led the way.