Massacre At Malmédy During the Battle of the Bulge

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Pergrin had no idea of the extent of the enemy’s strength, but one of his own jeep patrols had warned him that a German armored column was approaching the area to the southeast of Malmédy. He therefore warned Captain Mills and Lieutenant Lary not to proceed in that direction, and advised them to turn around and go to St. Vith via Stavelot, Trois Ponts and Vielsalm. But the artillery officers would not listen. They had their orders, their place on a designated route and, perhaps most important of all, they knew that two of the men with the route-marker truck were farther down that route and that they were due to pick them up. Ignoring Pergrin’s warning, the battery proceeded on its way. However, four vehicles at the rear of the convoy did not follow immediately. Owing to the sickness of a corporal who appeared to have food poisoning, Ksidzek in the battery commander’s car, the battery maintenance and wire trucks and the route markers’ pickup truck diverted to the 44th Evacuation Hospital in Malmédy to obtain medical treatment. These four vehicles carried a total of 27 men.

Preceding the Battery B convoy on the N-23 was an ambulance of the 575th Ambulance Company, returning to its base in Waimes after a visit to the 44th Evacuation Hospital. Following it were four more ambulances, three from the 575th and one from the 546th Company.

The junction of the N-23 and N-32, less than two miles southeast of Malmédy, was known locally as the Baugnez crossroads. Since it was the junction of five roads, the Americans called it Five Points. Standing at the crossroads at about midday on December 17 was a Battery B route marker and a military policeman whose job was to direct the remaining serials of the 7th Armored Division. The only buildings near the crossroads in those days were the Café Bodarwé, on the southwest side of the junction with two farms beyond it, another farm on the north side and two small houses on the east side of the N-23–one 150 yards and the other just over half a mile south of Five Points.

At about 1245 the military policeman and route marker waved Mills and Lary’s jeep through Five Points in the direction of Ligneuville and St. Vith. The visibility was good, the temperature just above zero and there was no snow on the ground except for a light covering in places untouched by the sun. Shortly after this, with the lead jeep about half a mile south of the crossroads and the last vehicle of the battery just short of the Café Bodarwé, the column came under fire from two German tanks some 800 to 1,000 yards to its east. These tanks were the point of Kampfgruppe (KGr.) Peiper, the leading formation of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. This division, the premier in the Waffen SS, together with its twin, the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, had been given the honor of spearheading the Sixth Panzer Army’s attack toward the Meuse River. They were the only formations in the Wehrmacht to bear the Führer’s name, and they enjoyed a fearsome reputation–both had already been accused of various war crimes and of killing prisoners in cold blood.

The commander of KGr. Peiper was SS Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper, a former adjutant to Heinrich Himmler and holder of the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves. Through his service in France and on the Eastern Front he was renowned as a brilliant soldier and commander, but on this particular day he was tired and frustrated. Due to tougher than expected opposition by the U.S. 99th Infantry Division against the formations ordered to create a gap for his 117 tanks, 149 armored personnel carriers, 24 artillery pieces and some 40 anti-aircraft guns, he was already more than 12 hours behind schedule. Peiper had so far suffered few casualties, but his lead element, under the command of SS Lieutenant Werner Sternebeck, had been reduced from its original seven tanks and a platoon of engineers in halftracks to two Panzerkampfwagen (PzKw.) Mk. IV tanks and two halftracks.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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