     The Sanatorium of St. Eduoard was a huge stone building, four stories high, on the western edge of Stoumont. Its commanding view and sturdy construction gave it a fortress-like appearance -- and conferred upon it a military importance that attracted both the SS men of Kampfgruppe Peiper and the Americans. As Peiper's men rolled into Stoumont, a small detachment of Americans occupied the Sanatorium. The civilian occupants -- some 250 old people, convalescents, and children, all in the care of Father Hanlet and some nuns, crowded into the basement.
     Soon the fighting started. The Germans attacked, and in fierce room-to-room fighting, killed or captured all the American defenders. The civilians cowered in the basement as the fighting raged over their heads. Someone burst into the room, but no shots were fired.
     A few hours later, the Americans counterattacked the building. Once again men fought from room to room; this time the Germans were driven out. The next day, a German tank moved up to the sanatorium and pumped shells in through the windows. Again the sanatorium changed hands. This time an American hidden in the sanatorium annex called down accurate artillery fire. For hours the American artillery pounded the building. With each impact, the timbers over the basement groaned and plaster dust fell on the frantic civilians.
     Late on the 22nd, the last SS men were driven out, and Father Hanlet emerged from the basement to gape at the battered shell that had been his sanatorium. Beams hung down at crazy angles; bodies littered the floor. But not one of the civilians in the basement had been hurt in the three-day siege.
/Close-quarter fighting
     Close-quarter fighting was the most deadly form of infantry combat, feared and hated by all soldiers. At the extremely short ranges involved, combat becomes a sequence of very brief encounters with the enemy, encounters in which split-second reactions determine who lives and who dies. The defender has the advantage over the attacker; he can lie in wait,  ready to blast anybody coming through the door or window. Yet the defender's position is hopeless; he is trapped and once his position has been revealed, he must surely die.
     There was a standard procedure for entering a room or house suspected to be occupied by the enemy. Only two or three soldiers were required (and more soldiers would probably just get in the way.) First, somebody chucks a grenade into the room through a door or window. The instant the grenade goes off, the attackers jump into the room, guns blazing.
     The grenade would seldom kill or even seriously injure the defender, who would most likely be barricaded behind furniture or a doorway. The purpose of the grenade was to force the defender to duck, to take his eyes away from the doorway for the fraction of a second necessary for the attackers to get inside.
     The ideal weapons for this work were the grenade and the machine pistol (often called a submachine gun.) The heavy and unnecessarily accurate infantry rifle was too clumsy for house-to-house work. Bazookas were also heavily used for blasting houses that were difficult to close in on./