   At 12:30 PM on the 17th of December, Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion was approaching the Baugnez crossroads outside of Malmedy. At the same time, the spearhead of Kampfgruppe Pieper, a part of 1st SS Panzer Division, approached the crossroads from the east. The Germans shot up the unarmed American convoy. The green American troops ran, but most were quickly rounded up. About 125 dazed and frightened soldiers were marched into a field. Ken Ahrens was one of them.
   Sepp Dietrich had given orders that 'no time was to be wasted on prisoners.' Some German officers interpreted this to mean that prisoners were to be disarmed and left for rear-area units to handle; others interpreted it more brutally. For two hours, Peiper's tanks, trucks, and half-tracks rolled by the captured Americans standing in the field with their hands in the air. Then somebody decided to stop wasting time with them. A machine gun started shooting. An American officer shouted "Don't run!", but the shooting continued. Ken Ahrens took two slugs in the back. He fell to the ground and feigned death.
   SS troopers threaded through the mass of bodies, killing anyone who moved or moaned. Afterwards, Ahrens heard whispers from others who had feigned death. At a signal, they all jumped up and ran. Some were shot, but Ahrens made it to safety. A few hours later, he stumbled into an American patrol. Within 24 hours, Americans all over the front knew about the Malmedy massacre, in which 86 POWs were murdered.
/Malmedy Massacre
   Within a day of the Malmedy massacre, everybody had heard the story. Its effect was electric. Field commanders had noticed a decline in the elan of American troops as the armies approached Germany; nobody wanted to die in what they thought were the last days of a war that had already been won.
   The Malmedy massacre changed everything. American soldiers realized that this was a fight to the finish, and that the Nazis would give no quarter in the battle. The result was a renewed determination on the part of the American soldiery. The bitter stubborness of small groups of American troops delayed the attack long enough for reinforcements to pour into the battle zone.
   After the war, the SS officers were brought to trial. The prosecution committed many legal improprieties. 42 defendents, including Jochen Peiper, were sentenced to death; 23 others, including Sepp Dietrich, received life imprisonment. There were protests on both sides of the Atlantic; Senator Joseph McCarthy led a Congressional investigation that cast severe doubt on the fairness of the trial and propelled him into the headlines. That and the indefatigable efforts of the Chief Defense Counsel, Colonel William Everett, eventually led to the release of most of the defendents, including both Peiper and Dietrich.
   But the hard feelings linger. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan stirred a storm of protest by visiting a cemetery for German war dead in which were buried many SS men. The cemetery was in Bitburg -- just 25 miles from the site of the Malmedy massacre./