THE US FIRST ARMY THE FORGOTTEN HEROES OF WW2; Malmedy Massacre 2 CHAPTER 9

To the north, units of the 6^th SS Panzer army Kampfgruppe peiper made up of 4,800 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 U.S fuel dump at Bullingen where they paused to refuel before continuing their were sent to stand in a field on a cross road.

 Here while standing, they were machine gunned.  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 stiffened resistance to the advance.

The Americans subsequently took revenge in shooting scores of German prisoners particularly the SS fallschirmjagen (paratroopers) subsequently. The news of the prisoners killing subsequently stiffened the fighting spirit of the American Soldiers who now realised that surrendering was no longer a viable option.

The subsequent advance of sixth Panzer SS 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 36 hours to accomplish in 1944 what took them only 9 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 unavenged and unpublicized.

Before the battle of the bulge, black soldiers in the U.S 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 the battle persuaded Eisenhower to release the blacks to combat duties and blacks thereafter could fight in frontline but at the greater risk of being shot when taken as prisoners by the racially murderous SS units and it is believed that was the fate that befell the eleven black soldiers taken prisoners and shot was racially inspired.

THE US FIRST ARMY THE FORGOTTEN HEROES OF WW2; THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE CHAPTER 7

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

Just as soon as the Hurtgen forest fell to the US first army on the 15^th   of December, the following day being the 16^th of December 1944, saw the launch of Germany’s last major offensive on the Western front which came to be known as the battle of the Bulge because of the bulge created in Allied lines as shown in the battle maps on American newspapers.

That the Germans could mount such a major offensive, taking the Allies completely by surprise along 80 kilometers of the front line defended by First army units stretched between the Ardennes forests in Belgium all the way down south to Luxembourg was completely unexpected.

The German assault fell primarily on the First army which had been heavily engaged in the battle of the Hurtgen forest, and was determined to drive to the Rhine along the lines of the Roer River through the Cologne plains while capturing the Roer River dams.

While units of the First army were busy down south locked in a bitter fight with the German army in the Hurtgen area, the army had sent the experienced but tired 28^th Infantry division from the Hurtgen battle zone to the Ardennes forested area between Belgium and Luxembourg for rest and refit. It had deemed the Ardennes front a quiet area where tired divisions could be rested and green troops or newly arriving divisions could be billeted and refitted pending engagements.