>> Funding for this program provided by... Additional support provided by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Man speaking German ] [ Cheering ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> We were alerted the night of the 16th of December that we were going to be committed into combat.

I was never more miserable at any time than I was in the Battle of the Bulge.

>> We didn't have overcoats.

We'd left all of our heavy equipment in England when we went to Holland, and the stuff hadn't caught up with us yet.

>> The next morning, the Germans hit us with tanks, big tanks.

And we ran in the trees, 'cause those tanks had to stay on the roads, the highway.

And so, well, their infantry would come with them.

♪♪ >> These films from the cameras of captured Nazi combat photographers portray the initial hours of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's surprise advance.

The German captions seized with this film identify the break-through point shown here as Ligneuville, Belgium, just south of Malmedy.

The Nazis claim extensive destruction and considerable booty as their blitz roars through the Eifel area and into the valleys of Ardennes.

The German High Commander's committed at least 20 full-strength divisions to the winter offensive.

♪♪ >> Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

>> We have seen a year marked on the whole by substantial progress toward victory, even though the year ended with a setback for our arms when the Germans launched a ferocious counterattack into Luxembourg and Belgium to the obvious objectives of cutting our line in the center.

Our men have fought with indescribable and unforgettable gallantry under most difficult conditions.

December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

>> Like millions of other Americans following Pearl Harbor, 20-year-old Private First Class Stephen Domitrovich from Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, found himself thrust into World War II.

Drafted in 1943, he arrived in Normandy, France, two days after the initial D-Day landings.

>> There were three of us brothers were drafted.

We all went to Europe.

>> Another Pennsylvanian, 21-year-old Tech Corporal Harold Billow, also received some mail from the government.

>> I got that letter from Uncle Sam, and it said something like, "Your friends and neighbors have chosen you for the Armed Forces of the United States."

And I ain't talked to my damn neighbors since.

>> Warren Schmitt, another tech corporal, hailed from Hutchinson, Kansas, and was attending the University of Kansas at the time he was drafted into the Army.

>> They sent me to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

There's field artillery there, and we took some training there.

>> Tech Corporal Ted Paluch was a native of Philadelphia, and just like Domitrovich, Billow, and Schmitt, was drafted into the United States Army.

Paluch got his notice in January of 1943.

He joined Harold Billow and Warren Schmitt as part of a specialized unit.

>> The 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.

>> The 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion was not a heavily-armed unit.

>> We didn't do any firing.

So we're just the looking.

>> We were strictly an observation battalion.

We weren't like the infantry, out there fighting.

>> We were assigned wherever they wanted to assign us.

And they assigned us to different divisions.

We had a job, and I believe we thought it was a good job.

And at that time, we were all kids, but we were going across Europe.

We were going across France following the front-line troops.

I was the only observation.

I was fully observing.

That was my job.

And so we were on the front lines at all times.

And then we would watch where the artillery fired, and direct the corrections to the target.

>> Private First Class Stephen Domitrovich served in the 575th Ambulance Company following the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.

>> Domitrovich didn't even know how to drive until he landed in the United States Army.

>> They taught us how.

>> Domitrovich certainly got some experience driving after landing in Europe.

>> There was 180 of us in this outfit, and we just drove up to France, Germany, Belgium.

>> Warren Schmitt ended up in Europe with the other men assigned the to the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.

>> We shipped over to England and landed in Brighton.

And we weren't training there for very long, and we crossed The Channel over into France.

>> Both Domitrovich and Schmitt found themselves in the vicinity of Malmedy, Belgium, in the fall of 1944.

>> We stopped at Malmedy.

They chased everybody out, all the civilians, and we took over the town.

>> In late 1944, Malmedy was just coming out of four years of German occupation.

The Germans had occupied the Belgian town since 1940, until the Americans arrived in September '44.

Located in the eastern part of Belgium, Malmedy is just 15 miles from the border of Germany.

The town would find itself in the cross hairs of the upcoming Battle of the Bulge due to its network of roads that provided good routes for tanks and infantry.

Located in a green and wooded countryside, the name Malmedy comes from the Latin "a malo mundarum," which translates into "the place of the bad confluence."

Soon a convergence of cruelty would be on display in a field just south of Malmedy.

Prior to the start of the Battle of the Bulge, on December 16, 1944, the area around Malmedy was mostly quiet, except for a few minor incidents here and there involving American G.I.'s.

>> 2:00 in the morning, I was driving down the road, and somebody was trying to wave me down.

Instead, I just run them over.

And I went back to my captain, and my captain said to me -- I told the captain, "I just run over a guy down the road."

So they went out and take a look, but they couldn't find no body.

Must've been a German.

>> Driving mishaps would soon be forgotten as the atmosphere in this part of the Ardennes was about to change.

The German onslaught had reached the outskirts of Malmedy.

The American G.I.

's in the frigid town were mostly unaware of what was coming toward them.

>> The weather wasn't too bad.

There was no snow or nothing.

But it was good.

The weather was good.

>> December 17th began uneasily for one fellow soldier in Harold Billow's unit, Battery B, of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.

>> Says, "I'm telling you, something terrible is gonna happen to us today."

Well, it did.

>> The G.I.

's were on their way out of town on the 17th, moving out in a convoy to the south.

As they left Malmedy, a an officer suggested that the caravan take an alternate route out of town because of reported German troop movements in the direction they were headed.

Harold Billow remembers the officer's exact words.

>> "I advise you not to go that way."

Well, we did, and that's what happened.

We got blasted.

♪♪ >> The 26-vehicle, roughly 150-man American convoy headed south out of Malmedy around noontime via the Route 62 National Road, which lead through the small hamlet of Baugnez, a couple of miles southeast of Malmedy.

There, the N62 connected to the National 632 at the Baugnez Crossroads, the major road junction also known locally as the Five Points.

The American caravan of trucks, Jeeps, and ambulances was on a collision course with one of the German army's strongest armored divisions, made up of more than 4,800 fanatical soldiers, more than 70 tanks, 100 half-tracks, and other support units.

The German division was led by one of World War II's most ruthless commanders.

>> The 1st SS, Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, commanded by Joachim Peiper, was moving up during the Battle of the Bulge, on their way to Antwerp.

>> Our convoy was going through where these five roads came together, and this German panzer division was coming up from our left, and they saw our vehicles already going through the Crossroads.

They were shooting them up, blowing them up, and naturally everything stopped.

[ Explosions ] [ Weapon firing ] >> These German trucks or tanks came out of the woods there and started making a lot of racket and stopped our convoy.

And I was in the fifth truck.

>> Because the roads in the small town of Thirimont were not serviceable for heavy armor, the 1st SS directed their armor around to the small town of Baugnez that belonged to the community of Malmedy.

Meanwhile, the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion had moved out of the city.

They were moving up towards the same town.

When that unit turned around towards the town of Stavelot, Joachim Peiper and his men noticed the American column on the road.

Meanwhile, the American troops tried to hide behind their ambulances, trucks, and Jeeps, while most of the men dove into the nearby ditch.

>> There was a lot of firing.

>> The Nazi display of weapons is more extensive than at any time since Normandy.

>> It wasn't long before the overwhelming German force overtook the soldiers in Harold Billow, Warren Schmitt, and Ted Paluch's artillery battalion, and the medical staff attached to Steve Domitrovich's 575th Ambulance Company.

It wasn't much of a fight.

The lightly-armed G.I.

's were significantly outgunned by the superior and combat-tasted German Waffen-SS tank division, many of whom had already fought savagely on the Russian front.

One by one, and in small groups, the Americans were taken prisoner by the SS.

The battle was over fast.

>> We pulled over.

We jumped in a ditch.

My buddy said, "It's an air raid."

I said, "No, keep your head down.

They're shooting at us."

>> Private First Class Domitrovich decided to abandon the ambulance, and headed straight for the nearby building.

There is no way you can run away from a machine-gun fire.

While hiding in the building, the German infantry now charged the house.

Running away from the German fire, Stephen Domitrovich jumped out of the back door and dove headfirst straight into the first ditch.

When he looked up, he stared right into a German rifle.

>> A German come down, put the gun to my head, and I gave out, and I give him my card for medic, and he threw it away and he said, "Nicht gut."

Then he took me up the road and across the fence and put me in the line with the rest of our soldiers.

♪♪ >> Ted Paluch, who'd been riding near the rear of the American column in a 3/4-ton weapons carrier, watched as trucks began pulling off the road onto the right shoulder as the German SS tanks began firing on the convoy.

Paluch tried to hide as best he could on the side of the road.

>> I can stand in the ditch, and it come up to about my knees, I guess, my chin.

They had a tank with a couple of SS troopers behind come down and put their gun down in the valley.

All we had were carbines.

We were Observing Battery.

And we were took prisoners, and we went up to the Crossroads, here.

They searched us.

Took cigarettes.

I had a pair of socks, watch.

Anything of value, they took.

>> Warren Schmitt was riding in a Jeep in the convoy when the firing began.

He jumped out and crawled 50 yards to a ditch off the west side of the N62.

It was full of frozen water.

He covered himself in mud and grass so he wouldn't be seen.

A few other soldiers joined him there.

Schmitt would be in that frozen water for over two hours.

Harold Billow was in the very rear of the American column that afternoon, in a weapons carrier, the second-to-last vehicle in the convoy heading out of Malmedy.

When Billow saw the lead German tank start firing, he and several other soldiers ran and hid behind a nearby house and café at the intersection of the Crossroads, which was owned by a Madame Bodarwé.

>> After everything stopped, the Germans came back and got us, took us up the road, and put us in the field, off the road.

And there we stood, about 150 of us, in the field with our hands up.

>> According to the Geneva Convention rules set forth in 1929, Articles 2, 3, and 4 specify that captured prisoners of war are P.O.W.

's of the power which holds them and not prisoners of the unit which takes their surrender.

It also states that captured enemy combatants have the right to honor and respect.

These articles were about to be challenged as the American P.O.W.

's were led into this field by their SS guards at the Baugnez Crossroads around 1:00 p.m. on December 17, 1944.

>> Again referring to the German captions, they claim that an American column consisting of tanks, armored cars, and sundry service vehicles was wiped out as the Nazis began this drive before Malmedy.

That most of the Americans were surprised at their guns and annihilated.

The following scenes were listed as morale pictures by the German cameramen -- captured American cigarettes being distributed to panzer units.

>> I had no idea what was gonna -- The only thing I thought, "Well, gonna be prisoners, and they're gonna take us back."

But that didn't happen.

>> There was 147 captured, and I was in the front of the line of all the soldiers.

The guys were talking.

The guys said, "They might take us back to Germany."

And I said, "They ain't gonna take us back to Germany.

Look.

They're putting machine guns on the road."

I said, "We're done for."

The Germans never talked about what they're gonna do.

And I was afraid.

>> Well, when I got in the field, I was practically in the front row, to the left of the whole bunch.

And while we were standing there, this German command car came up and stopped out in front of us.

>> We were surrounded by German guards, all around us.

>> I knew they would start shooting when they set up two machine guns on the road.

>> As the 150 or so American G.I.

's tried to keep warm in the frigid field at the intersection in Baugnez, the 1st SS Division was already preparing to move out quickly and continue their march toward Antwerp.

Time was not on the Germans' side, and dealing with the American prisoners of war was slowing down their momentum.

Someone made a decision, either there in the Baugnez Crossroads or before the Battle of the Bulge ever began -- nobody knows for sure -- that American P.O.W.

's would not be accorded their rights under Articles 2, 3, and 4 of the Geneva Convention during the Ardennes offensive.

Was this soon-to-be deadly verdict made by the commander of the 1st SS Panzer Division, Joachim Peiper, as most believe?

Or his major, Werner Poetschke, also there at the Baugnez Crossroads?

Maybe the directive came much earlier from their commander, General Sepp Dietrich, or perhaps the mandate came from Nazi Germany's leader himself.

In the end, it took just one pistol shot from the side of the road at the Baugnez Crossroads to initiate a hail of gunfire that slaughtered American G.I.

's in an empty field just south of Malmedy, Belgium, on December 17th, 1944.

[ Gunshot ] >> This officer stood up, and he took one shot.

Shot one guy on the right side of me.

Then he shot another guy on the left side of me.

This medic was fixing the guy up.

German soldier was standing alongside of him, and after he had him bandaged up, he shot both of them through the head to finish them off.

[ Gunshots ] And in the meantime, one of the tanks in that column stopped out in front of us.

And they set up two machine guns on top of the tank.

When this officer was done shooting those two guys, he yelled something to them, and then they opened up with the machine guns, spraying the field where we were all standing, trying to kill everybody.

[ Machine-gun fire ] >> When the shooting began, everybody was falling down, hollering, "Mom!

God!

Mom!

God!"

>> They put us in a field, and then every tank and half-track that came around -- I think there was some 96 of them came around, firing into the group.

>> That's what they were supposed to do, because they were told that they had no time to take prisoners.

Get rid of them.

The German soldier said to the German officer, "What do we do?"

And they said, "Boop, boop."

Meant "Shoot 'em.

Get rid of 'em.

Shoot 'em."

And that's what they did.

>> And that the prosecution will be limited... >> Later, in war-crimes trials at the former Dachau concentration camp complex in May of 1946, American prosecutors offered their explanation of who was to blame for giving the order to execute the American G.I.

's in the field at Baugnez.

>> Preparation for this offensive, which started on the 16th of December, 1944, Hitler held a meeting of his army commanders at Bad Nauheim on the 11th or 12th of December, 1944, where he spoke for some three hours.

In this speech, Hitler stated that the decisive hour for the German people had arrived, that the army would have to act with brutality and show no humane inhibitions, that a wave of fright and terror should precede the army, and that the enemy's resistance was to be broken with terror.

This order was passed on down through corps, division, and regiment.

The 1st SS Panzer regiment, commanded by the accused, Peiper, passed on this order to subordinate commands in words and substance to the effect that, "This fight will be conducted stubbornly, with no regard for Allied prisoners of war, who will have to be shot if the situation makes it necessary and compels it."

All troops were warned that, in the event of capture, the existence of these orders must not be made known to the enemy.

From these speeches and activities, the troops believed that they could disregard the rules of the Geneva Convention with impunity, and that they could fight as they had previously done on the Russian front.

>> They had no mercy on anybody.

Anything was in their road, they mowed everybody down.

Men, women, children.

Ran over things.

When they got through a town, they told me that the place was in ruins, ashes.

>> This was Colonel Peiper, and he was a mean son of a gun.

And he was in a position where he couldn't take any enemies, because he was in a secret deal -- this is the first day of the Battle of the Bulge -- and he couldn't stop.

He had to keep going.

And so we were just a wide place in the road as far as he was concerned.

And so that's probably why he decided to shoot the people in my battery.

>> After the initial firing died down at the Crossroads on December 17th, Waffen-SS troops were ordered to go into the field at Baugnez and kill any Americans who may not have died in the initial burst of fire from German vehicles and soldiers by the side of the road.

[ Gunshots ] >> And then, when the machine guns was done firing, then the Germans went through the field, and they kicked the guys, rolled them over to see if they were still alive.

And anybody that showed signs of life, they'd point-blank shoot him through the head.

I could hear these Germans going around to guys, and you could hear them shooting them.

And when their magazine was empty, they'd put a new one in, keep going.

They kept going through the whole field, checking everybody, to finish them off.

>> I didn't know at that time that they killed all of these -- all my friends, because I didn't look up.

I was down deep, as low as I could get.

And I was down in this stream, and just a whole lot of praying.

Just a whole lot of praying.

And it was horrible.

And a little later on, the Germans got out, and one of them walked over to where I was, and I was just laying there like I was dead.

And he stood there for a while, and I said, "Oh, I'm gonna get it."

But he didn't shoot me.

When you're under tension like that, when you're under excitement like that, it's hard to remember exactly what your thoughts were.

And I was just happy to get the thing over with.

>> Reg Jans has walked the field at the Baugnez Crossroads too many times to count.

Not much has changed over the decades.

Every time he visits, he feels the presence of those who suffered here -- soldiers like Steve Domitrovich.

>> I laid down.

I laid down and started praying.

>> While playing dead, Steve noticed a German boot landing right next to his head.

>> A German come over and looked down.

He stood there.

And all of a sudden, he shot my buddy next to me, and he looked at me.

I seen his boots.

I seen him looking at me.

But he left me.

And I said, "Thank God he left me."

>> Little bit further, a severely wounded American soldier start coughing.

Steve was dropped to the ground again, and the German moved on and finished off the other guy, forgetting about Steve.

>> I wonder why he didn't shoot me?

'Cause I had the Good Lord above me.

And He was watching over me.

>> The thing I think about is, when they turned the machine guns on us and I played dead, went down, flat down, and laid there, and hoping that I could survive and get back and tell people what they did to us.

>> I guess I was praying, too.

'Cause I could hear other people praying, too.

You figured, you were captured, maybe taken back and -- prison camp.

That's what I thought might probably happen if I was caught.

But I didn't expect that.

While we were there, laying on the ground, that was their front line, and that's where they had stationed, in that bar or house there, whatever it was.

And they came around, anyone that was moaning, they shot.

And there was proof of that afterwards, too.

The shells were found there.

Yeah, I just laid still.

That's all I could do.

And I guess he didn't notice.

That's all.

>> I was laying facedown.

I had my steel helmet over my head, and I'm just laying there, as quiet as I could be.

And I also -- At that time, it was cold -- mighty cold.

You know, the steam coming out of your mouth.

You wouldn't believe how little I inhaled and exhaled so the steam didn't come out.

'Cause if they'd have saw it, they'd have knew there was still life there.

I got hit on the back.

I don't know whether the guy kicked me or hit me with a rifle butt, but I did get a good thump on the back, and I knew what they were doing, and I just stayed put and managed to make it.

>> I just was doing a lot of praying.

I think a lot of my life behind me and ahead of me was going through there.

It was a condition that I would never want to be in again.

>> This happened around noontime, and it was going up till almost dark.

Several hours we were laying there, till we were able to get up.

I was laying, that day, facedown, and I didn't move until later on, when a guy said about getting out of there.

>> After laying down and playing dead for quite some time, from the corner of his eyes, Steve noticed a few guys started to get up.

>> Didn't hear no vehicle.

Didn't hear any German.

So we just figured they left.

>> Assuming that the Germans have now left, he stood up and start running straight to the ridge without looking back.

>> About four or five of us start running down the road.

And we got to a Belgian home, and he fussed.

He didn't want to have nothing to do with us.

So he said, "The Americans are over the hill."

>> I figured I was gonna stay there until it got dark, and then I was gonna take off.

And I had my right senses that I knew which was I was gonna go, back down the same way we originally come from.

And all those that were still able to get up and run did.

but most of them guys were badly wounded.

And I can still see the one guy running to my left.

He had his chin hanging down.

He was shot through the jaw, his mouth.

But at this crossroads where this happened, there was a house and a café.

And when this guy says, "Come on.

Let's get out of here," most of us that was able to run back ran into this house.

I did, too.

But as soon as I got inside that door, I said to myself, "The guys up there in that tank saw us go in there.

Somebody's gonna come down and get us."

I turned around, went right back out that door, across the road to the hedgerow, and I ran down along the hedgerow to try to keep out of the line of fire in case the guys on the machine guns would fire at us.

And they did.

As we were running, they were shooting at us.

I looked down once, and I saw the dirt kicking up close to my feet.

But then, what the Germans did, they went down there and they poured gasoline around that house.

After they poured gasoline around the place and set fire to it, everybody came out, and they killed them.

Shot them.

>> I got up and start running down the little dirt road there, and that was their front line.

And a German SS trooper came out, took a couple shots at me, and I dove into the -- There was a break in the hedgerow, and I dove into that.

He come up and looked at me.

He didn't come in.

He just looked at the outside and went back.

He could have shot me then if he wanted to.

So I laid there for a little while, and I noticed there was a little break -- a little, I guess, hill right behind me, there, and I just rolled to the hill.

>> Some 50 G.I.

's in total were able to escape the massacre at the Baugnez Crossroads by either escaping the initial firing at the Crossroads or by playing dead in the frozen field.

Paluch, Domitrovich, Billow, and Schmitt had all made it back to the Allied lines near the town of Malmedy.

>> I said, as I got out of the ditch, there, I struggled for a while, rubbed my legs, and finally got to the point where I was half crawling and half running, or walking or whatever, and started going on.

We went down, and then I ran into a couple of friendly soldiers that were out close to where I was at.

I had to explain a number of different things about baseball teams and everything else before they'd figure out I was an American.

[ Chuckles ] Because there were Germans in American uniforms out there.

>> We went down over the hill, and we seen all our G.I.'s.

We put our hands up.

We went down hollering, rolling down the hill.

>> A Jeep come by and, like I said, they were picking the guys up that were running back.

And they took us all back to a first-aid station.

And there we were -- everybody was interviewed, telling the same story about what happened up there.

>> The survivors were treated by medics in Malmedy.

>> We came right into the center of the city, there, and then we were examined.

And I saw guys come in with both arms, both legs, shot across the stomach and blood just coming out of his mouth like a spigot.

>> The exact number of Americans that have been massacred here in the field is still unknown to this day, but it is believed that 84 of them lost their lives at the Crossroads.

>> Just four days after the massacre at the Baugnez Crossroads, orders were handed down from at least one American division headquarters that German SS or paratroopers should be shot on sight.

>> They told the Americans, "Don't take any prisoners."

>> We got a couple of them captured, and I came in to company headquarters.

There were three of them.

They were the SS.

They were kids.

Little -- Well, not kids, but teenagers.

So, our tech sergeant said, "I'm gonna take them to a battalion."

I said, "You want help?"

He said, "No, I want them to escape.

Ha, ha, ha."

So they started out, and I don't think it was 10 seconds later, I heard his Thompson going.

Came back, "Yeah," he said.

"They tried to escape."

Oh, please.

He just shot them.

>> Following the massacre at the Baugnez Crossroads, a heavy two- to four-foot snowfall covered the bodies of the Americans who were shot on December 17th.

Fighting in the area continued after the massacre, and on December 30th, reports of uneven humps in the snow were made by soldiers of the 30th Infantry Division.

It wasn't until almost a full month after the mass execution at Baugnez that the 30th Infantry was able to start the process of identifying and, with help from a Graves Registration unit, removing the frozen corpses of the dead American G.I.'s.

It took two days to recover all the dead using dog tags and other methods.

Many had died not during the initial shooting, but after, when SS soldiers went through the field individually shooting wounded men at close range.

71 of the 84 American bodies were found within a couple hundred yards of the original Bodarwé café, located at the Baugnez Crossroads.

>> Four weeks later, their frozen bodies, hands and ankles bound, were found where they fell.

>> It snowed right after Malmedy, and all those bodies were covered.

They had two foot of snow or more.

They were covered, and they weren't able to locate them bodies for a long time after.

And when they did, the way they got them, the 30th Infantry Division was up there, they went up and went through the field with mine detectors and located the bodies.

The swept the snow off of them, and each guy, they put a number on him, a tag number.

And then they throwed them up on a big truck, and they took them back to a heated building.

>> Peter Munger was with the 30th Infantry Division, fighting near Baugnez.

>> We went up to Five Corners, where the massacre occurred, where it was in the field just to the right of the Five Corners.

All I saw were snow -- you know, mounds of snow.

And it never occurred to me -- you wouldn't even think of it.

And I walked right by it and made a circle and came back to our company headquarters and reported, "No action.

Didn't see anybody.

Nobody fired at us," and that was that.

They came through and went, "Did you hear?

There's a slaughter of a unit coming through up at the Corners where you guys just went through."

We didn't see anything.

I were astounded.

I couldn't understand what mentality could do this.

To this day, I don't understand it.

>> News spread quickly throughout the world of the now infamous Malmedy Massacre.

It was the largest mass execution of American G.I.

's in World War II.

It was another eye-opening and shocking event for those on the home front, who could not comprehend that something like this would happen to unarmed soldiers who surrendered peacefully.

♪♪ In 1946, several of the survivors of the Malmedy Massacre returned to Germany to take part in war-crimes trials at the Dachau concentration camp.

Many of those SS commanders accused of being involved in the shooting on December 17th were being tried as war criminals, along with any German soldiers who took part in the planning or actual firing on that cold afternoon at the Baugnez Crossroads.

Some 73 Germans were being prosecuted.

It would be painful to many of the survivors to have to re-live that day while testifying in front of the same men involved in murdering 84 of their fellow American G.I.'s.

>> Here, men of the United States 30th Division uncover the frozen bodies of American soldiers who, after surrendering, were murdered by their German captors.

>> Will you indicate the position, to the court, in which you held your hands?

[ Interpreter speaking German ] >> I held them like this before they started shooting.

>> I heard more screams and more shots.

[ Interpreter speaking German ] >> After the shots, would the screaming stop?

[ Interpreter speaking German ] >> Yes, it did.

>> I had nothing to do with that war crimes.

After I got home, why, some of the guys, a lot of them got sent back over there for it, but I had nothing to do with it.

>> They just came and talked to me to go to testify.

And then I didn't get into the courtroom.

I testified through a written testimony.

>> The suicide of Adolf Hitler in late April of 1945, and the unconditional surrender of German forces a week later, did not bring closure to the 50 survivors of the infamous Malmedy Massacre.

>> Do I have nightmares?

Every once in a while, it comes back to me.

I see everything that went on.

It's always difficult to see the bodies in the field.

I was screaming all night long.

I was lucky I didn't get shot.

I survived because I had the Good Lord with me.

>> It was pretty much -- Everybody pretty much knew all about it because it was publicized considerably.

But it wasn't easy to talk about, anyway, but I -- I just sort of... let it go.

Just let it go.

>> I had nightmares, all right.

And like I said, last week, that one night, I couldn't sleep at all, and all I could think of -- and I could picture it as if everything was happening right now out in front of me.

And I went downstairs, made myself a cup of hot tea and toast, and I set down there for a couple hours.

Then I went back upstairs, got in bed.

I still couldn't sleep.

But that's the worst I've ever had.

But before that, over the years, always went downstairs because of thinking about it.

It's something I'll never forget.

I just can't believe that I survived that and the rest.

All those that didn't, a lot of them are still over there, and a lot of them were brought home here.

Yeah.

It's something.

I'll never forget.

>> Oh, my God.

You'll never forget that for the rest of your life.

I remember everything down to a "T." >> All that machine-gun fire, and I never got a scratch.

There was about four or five that never got a scratch, never got scratched with all that firing going on like that.

It's remarkable how we survived that.

>> It was part of my life that was over with and done.

>> Compounding the horror of the Malmedy Massacre for Warren Schmitt was receiving the news later that his brother, Gene, who was in the 75th Infantry Division, had been killed during the Battle of the Bulge.

>> I saw him over there, I think it must have been about a week before he was killed.

He was close to where I was, and I found out about that.

And we met, and we talked at that time.

And then he was killed about a week later.

♪♪ There was a lot of terrible things happened.

And, you know, one more here or there is no more terrible than some other days, I suppose.

But that was a big loss to me.

He and I were pretty close.

He was four years younger than I.

>> A large, simple timber cross memorializing the Malmedy Massacre was put up in September of 1945 at the Baugnez Crossroads.

The wooden cross was later replaced, in July of 1950, by a much more formal Malmedy memorial, built at the Baugnez Crossroads, across from the actual field where the killings took place.

♪♪ The memorial wall holds 84 flat stones with the names of the soldiers who were killed during the massacre.

Another single stone nearby reads "To the memory of the soldiers of the United States Army who, while prisoners of war, were massacred by Nazi troops on this spot on 17 December, 1944."

♪♪ >> I wouldn't go back because too much memories there, and I couldn't take it.

>> I came home, and I was ready to settle down, get married.

And that's what I did.

Had a wonderful family.

>> For Harold Billow, the memory of December 17, 1944, at the Baugnez Crossroads just south of Malmedy never fades.

84 flags in his front yard remind him of that several times a year.

>> Every Memorial Day, 4th of July, Veterans Day, and Flag Day, in front of my house, in my front yard, I put flags up.

That's how I remember.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Woman vocalizing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> ♪ And when the war is over, I'll sing with tearful eyes ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ And when the war is over, I'll sing with tearful eyes ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Funding for this program provided by... Additional support provided by... ♪♪