Battle of the Bulge; Dec 17, 1944. The Malmedy Massacre.

 

 The massacre site in 1944 (above), and today (below) via Google Earth

Gettysburg Daily    "The atrocities Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Stuart Dempsey describes actually occurred around the tiny village of Baugnez, Belgium, some four kilometers from Malmedy. American soldiers and Belgian civilians were also murdered at several other locations over the next few days by members of the German 1st SS Panzer Division. The final toll is in dispute, but at least 362 U.S. soldiers and 111 Belgians were executed between December 17-20. The actual number may be a good bit higher. One of those killed/murdered 65 years ago today was Private First Class Frederick Clark. He is buried in the Gettysburg National Cemetery."

The Malmedy Massacre

 

The bodies of 81 American soldiers from Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery

 Observation Battalion, killed by Waffen-SS troops on December 17, 1944,

 during the Battle of the Bulge near the Belgian town of Malmedy. 

... "Mine detectors were used to locate the 81 bodies, which had rested undisturbed since the day of the shootings and by now had frozen into grotesque positions. Forty one of the bodies were found to have been shot in the head. As each body was uncovered it was numbered, as seen in the photo above." ...  Photos of the field in 1944

A survivor's story ... "Paluch’s battalion first saw action in the Hurtgen Forest just prior to the Battle of the Bulge.  As Ted explains it, “We were in the Hurtgen for a while, that was a bitch I’ll tell you.  The damn trees would explode from the German artillery, and in just a matter of days it seemed that every tree within sight was stripped bare of all limbs.  It was a bloodbath in there.”  As bad as the Hurtgen was for Paluch, the worst was yet to come." ...

 Flowers, apologies mark commemoration of 70th anniversary of Malmedy massacre

 "At the site where Nazi troops massacred scores of unarmed American prisoners of war during the Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s ambassador to Belgium expressed a sense of remorse during a ceremony Sunday marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre." ...

Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper on the witness stand, June 17, 1946.