Chapter 9.2: Lanzerath to Baugnez

Kampfgruppe Peiper departed Lanzerath at 04:00 on 17 December, drove north through the Bullinger Forest to Buchholz Station, and overran the sleeping garrison at Honsfeld by 05:15. The column then diverted north-west to Büllingen — outside its assigned axis — to capture American fuel, before turning west through Schoppen, Ondenval, and Thirimont. By approximately 13:00, the Spitze reached the Baugnez crossroads on the N-32 south of Malmedy, where it encountered Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.

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Lanzerath

“Peiper Time” (04:00)

At four o’clock on the morning of 17 December, Kampfgruppe Peiper’s armoured column lurched out of Lanzerath and headed north into the Bullinger Forest. Fallschirmjäger of Major Siegfried Taubert’s II./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 9 clung to every available surface of the tanks and half-tracks. Those who could not straddle the big machines walked alongside on foot, protecting the column’s flanks through the wooded terrain with their assault weapons. The night was pitch-black, the fog so dense that tanks and SPWs had to be guided on foot by parachutists. (Castor, La route des massacres, 2005, p. 45; Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Peiper had been awake for more than sixty hours. His mood, by his own account, was “very angry.” The Meuse was still far away. The previous day had been a disaster: the approach march had been snarled behind the 12. Volksgrenadier-Division’s infantry, the Losheim bridge had cost hours, and the Kampfgruppe had covered barely ten kilometres. But now it was after midnight — the smallest of Sunday hours and, for a man accustomed to cavalry-like panzer rides through the Russian darkness, “Peiper time.” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Due to losses, Peiper had reorganised Sternebeck’s Spitze by adding three tanks from the 6. Kompanie. Among the new arrivals was SS-Hauptscharführer August Tonk, an older oddball in the panzer regiment who had turned thirty-three on the day the offensive started. A veteran of the German Condor Legion in Spain, Tonk was a born swashbuckler — Peiper had once punished him for wearing a turban into battle. The Spitze rearranged in the darkness, and Peiper zoomed down the road without resistance. “The forest offered neither resistance,” he scowled, “nor were there any mines.” (Parker, Fatal Crossroads, 2012, p. 34; Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

So long was the tail of Kampfgruppe Peiper that the German tanks and vehicles moved through Lanzerath all day as they headed north. It would take the 800 vehicles the entire day to pass through; by the time the lead elements reached Stavelot, the tail of the column had barely transited the town. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025; Cooke and Evans, Kampfgruppe Peiper, 2005)

Young Sanny Schür and her teenage cousin Adolf ventured out of their houses to watch the column pass. “We knew we were German again when we saw those tanks coming!” the boy remembered. “There seemed like many more than a hundred … it was endless.” They watched as Lieutenant Lyle Bouck and the American prisoners from the Café Scholzen were marched off to the east into captivity. To Adolf, the column seemed to snake through Lanzerath for days. Some of the German soldiers looked war-weary and hungry, but the majority appeared eager to fight. “We’ll push them back to the English Channel,” one called out as he left town. “Soon we’ll be on the heights above Liège!” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

At about this time, Combat Command B of the 9th Armored Division — positioned in the Waimes–Faymonville area and potentially capable of opposing Kampfgruppe Peiper — began its move toward Saint-Vith, leaving the road ahead clear. (Castor, La route des massacres, 2005, p. 45)

Buchholz Station (c. 05:00)

The column’s first objective was Buchholz Station, where Major Moore of the 3rd Battalion, 394th Infantry Regiment had sent his companies to reinforce the 1st Battalion at Losheimergraben. Only two platoons — perhaps eighty men — remained near the isolated railway station. Despite having been surprised the day before and the obvious danger, the Spitze found them asleep. The men of 10. (gepanzerte) Kompanie under SS-Obersturmführer Georg Preuß captured them quickly. (Castor, La route des massacres, 2005, p. 45)

A single company radio operator in the command post cellar near the station managed to evade capture. For the next few hours he kept in touch with his battalion headquarters, reporting Germans in the rooms above and then the movement westward of thirty German tanks and twenty-eight half-tracks full of infantry, with columns of men marching by on foot. No one at headquarters took him seriously. (Crookenden, Battle of the Bulge 1944, 1980, p. 24)

By five o’clock the road from Buchholz to Honsfeld was packed with American vehicles of all kinds moving westward ahead of the German advance, and Peiper’s tanks simply joined in the stream of traffic. (Crookenden, Battle of the Bulge 1944, 1980, p. 24)

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Honsfeld

The Sleeping Garrison (Night, 16–17 December)

Honsfeld was a rest centre for the 394th Infantry Regiment, a slight depression surrounded by bare countryside with about twenty inhabitants still living among the soldiers. The previous day had been unusually abnormal: the morning whistling of German shells passing over the village, then long columns of American vehicles calmly retreating westward, channelled by imperturbable Military Police, while the anti-aircraft guns of the Liège V-1 defence belt evacuated their positions on the Büllingen road. (Cailloux, Ardennes 1944 Pearl Harbor en Europe, 1969; Castor, La route des massacres, 2005, pp. 45–46)

Through the night of 16–17 December, American troops of every kind flowed into Honsfeld: Company A of the 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion with two reconnaissance platoons and four towed guns, two facing Buchholz, two facing Holzheim; men retreating from the east; others from the south after fighting near Manderfeld, including Troop A of the 32nd Cavalry Squadron under Lieutenant Bob Reppa. At four o’clock in the morning, Company B of the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion arrived under Captain John Kennedy with a platoon of towed 3-inch guns. Their mission was to prepare the village defence. Due to darkness and unfamiliarity with the terrain, reconnaissance was impossible and the guns were not even put in position. Crews rushed into houses for warmth and sleep. By that hour, an estimated five hundred GIs were crowded into Honsfeld with perhaps twenty antitank guns, light reconnaissance vehicles with 37mm guns, numerous machine guns, dozens of bazookas, and small arms — a formidable defensive force, had anyone been awake to use it. (Castor, La route des massacres, 2005, pp. 45–46)

Marlene Dietrich’s entertainment troupe had arrived the previous morning to give a show; they were hastily evacuated when the German threat became known. (Castor, La route des massacres, 2005, p. 46)

“The Biggest Damned Tank” (c. 05:00–05:15)

The retreat of American columns continued all night, and it sufficed for Peiper’s Panzers to infiltrate among them under cover of darkness to emerge before dawn in Honsfeld. (Cailloux, Ardennes 1944 Pearl Harbor en Europe, 1969)

Screening the entrance to Honsfeld was the 1st Reconnaissance Platoon of the 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion with its towed 3-inch guns. Just after midnight, an officer with the 18th Cavalry Squadron had called up section leader Sergeant James Gallagher to tell him he would bring his light tanks past his position that morning — friendlies. It was a prudent precaution; all through that autumn, friendly fire in the Ardennes “rest area” had been more dangerous than enemy weapons. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

At 05:15, a column of tanks approached the outpost. Gallagher and his aide went downstairs to investigate. The sky was pitch black. He walked toward the dark shape of the lead tank. “18th Cav?” he piped up. Without warning, Gallagher was slammed over the head by a rifle butt and sent sprawling to the ground. His companion escaped amid a flurry of gunshots. Gallagher was soon conveyed to a German interrogator who spoke clear English. “You are completely surrounded by infantry and armour,” the man boasted. It was useless for any of his troops to do anything but surrender. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Lieutenant Bob Reppa, with Troop A of the 32nd Cavalry Squadron, had sought sanctuary in Honsfeld. Knowing he was close to the front, he had posted Sergeant George Creel with the 3rd Platoon in a wheeled armoured car at the southernmost house before bedding down for the night at the Red Cross headquarters. It was close to five o’clock when an American vehicle passed, only to have another approach just a minute behind it. In the darkness, Creel doubted what he saw and rubbed his eyes. There, in the middle of the road, was a man motioning with a flashlight “the biggest damned tank I’ve ever seen.” Creel planned to fire, but the trailer attached to his M-8 blocked his field of fire. He crouched as the behemoth passed — so close that he saw the German cross on the side. He only had a 37mm gun anyway. Moments after it passed, someone else started firing up ahead. With the tanks distracted, Creel jumped off and ran to warn Reppa. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

“Those don’t sound like ours,” Reppa said to Sergeant William Lovelock. Lovelock dashed to the door and eased it open. In the darkness, a shell burst illuminated the street outside. Revealed in the flash were enormous tanks and half-tracks. “They are German,” Lovelock whispered, closing the door. Just then Creel appeared at the entrance. “Why didn’t you shoot at these tanks?” Reppa demanded. Creel explained that he had not been warned by anyone further back. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

The 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion (c. 05:15–07:00)

The 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion had arrived at the north-west end of Honsfeld at four o’clock that morning. Captain Kennedy kept mumbling, “I think we’re in the wrong place,” and Lieutenant Baysek admitted that he did not even have a map. Kennedy sent everyone to bed, billeting part of the 2nd Platoon in a house a little further into the village, while locating the 1st Platoon in a three-storey stone building on the western exit of town. They were positioned at the critical junction of the Büllingen–Heppenbach road at a corner known to locals as “Am Borren.” Nobody bothered to unlimber the towed anti-tank guns. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Private Elmer Haynes, a good ol’ boy from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was surprised when Private Robert “R.B.” Taylor came in just after everyone had gone to sleep. “Haynes!” Taylor yelled. “A German reconnaissance unit just came right through here at twenty-five to thirty miles per hour and didn’t even slow down!” Taylor had just seen Peiper’s Panzerspitze under Sternebeck — four or five vehicles. Haynes woke Lieutenant Baysek. “You think R.B. is just imagining things?” he asked. Soon neither man needed convincing. Both could hear the rumble of tanks groaning in the morning quiet. “Lieutenant, that sounds like them now!” Haynes ran to his gun, and his driver helped him uncouple the piece from its half-track hitch. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

S/Sgt Ralph J. “Frenchy” LeBlanc was awakened by machine-gun fire going through the window of the house:

Just about daybreak I was awakened by machine gunfire going through the window of the house. I was on the second floor. There was plaster falling and glass breaking. I thought there was a drunken GI outside, and I went to the window. I looked out, and there was a guy outside the window, just below, and he was not in a GI uniform! The road outside was full of German tanks and troop carriers. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Private Jim Foley of the 394th Regiment was one of the hundred-odd American GIs enjoying time off at Camp Maxley, the 99th Infantry Division rest camp. Even if Marlene Dietrich’s appearance was cancelled because of the shelling, Foley and a friend had enjoyed a movie in the recreation hall and an early sleep. At ten o’clock that night “stuff” started falling. “We didn’t think much of it,” he recalled. “After all, they told us it was just a heavy patrol action — what a patrol!” About two o’clock they heard vehicles in the street going the wrong way. Still, Foley stayed in his sleeping bag until about five o’clock. Then he heard Kraut voices in the street. He stuck his head outside and saw recon cars knocked out across the street and three German tanks very much intact. “Then some bastard opened up with a burp gun on me, so I got my ass inside in a hurry.” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Haynes got his towed 3-inch gun into position — the only one pointed toward the critical right turn where the German armour would appear:

I could not see the tanks until they came around this building and had to come around this turn. I was firing across this kerb. It was only about fifty yards. I saw the first one come around. I let the second and third one come around. I fired towards the gun turret. I ripped the track off. When I hit the first one, the turret was smashed, and the gun barrel dropped to the pavement and caught fire. I then went back to the first one and hit it in the turret and then the one in the middle and hit it too. All of them sat there in the street and burned. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Three German tanks burning in the street. But then an artillery shell landed by the rock wall, and shrapnel tore into Haynes’s left leg. He bandaged himself with sulfonamide powder. After a brief lull came another shell, blowing in the wall of the house. Lieutenant Baysek, out in the street, shouted: “All of my men have been killed or wounded. I am ordering all you men to surrender.” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

The White Flag (c. 06:30–07:00)

What followed was not the orderly surrender of defeated soldiers. It was a series of killings.

The men gathered in the kitchen. There was one man with a Red Cross armband, and they thought if they let him go out first, the Germans would take them. LeBlanc put his loaded gun on the table. As they came out of the house with their hands up, there was only one German outside. The road was jammed with tanks and trucks full of infantry. “Man, we’ve really had it,” LeBlanc thought. “We could have never held off this.” They were marched across the street and lined up against a building. A paratrooper searched them for weapons; when he found a clip of ammunition in LeBlanc’s chest pocket, he was going to hit him across the face with it, but then he just threw it across the ground. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

But when Lieutenant Baysek led another group out of their house, a white handkerchief on a three-foot stick, they were fired upon by a tank just down the road. Haynes, in the street with his hands up, saw what happened next:

There were about twenty-five of us in the street. This German tank came in from behind us from the other direction. The tank stopped and opened fire with this machine gun on us … I fell down immediately on my stomach with my head to one side so I could see it. He fired back and forth on the road as long as he could see anyone moving. When he decided all were dead, he turned his tank around and went back from where he had come from. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

S/Sgt Billy Wilson saw two men walk out of a house across the street with a white flag in hand. “They were about four or five yards from the house, and they were shot.” Wilson went immediately to Lieutenant Laurens B. Grandy, who had ordered everyone to surrender. “I don’t think it is any use to surrender,” he said. “We’ll be killed anyway.” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

When Wilson’s group came out, hands raised, a German corporal got out of a half-track and walked up to the front of the rank:

[He] just raised his burp gun and shot two men at the end of the line on my left … He hit Private Mann and Private John Crowell, who were the first two on the end of the line … I heard Crowell scream and saw him fall. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Wilson was not going to wait for the shots to reach his end of the line. He turned and sprinted, dashing into a field and running as fast as his feet would carry him. Bullets trailed him. Wilson ran north-east over a mile until he reached the lines of the 99th Infantry Division. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Who had shot the men coming out under the white flag? That would only emerge in a trial months later. Ernst Koehler, with the SS 1st Panzer Company, described seeing the shooting of Americans emerging from a house near Honsfeld with a white flag. The shooter, said Koehler, was company chief SS-Obersturmführer Karl Kremser. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

“He Was Just a Dumb Farmer” (c. 12:00)

While the column ground through Honsfeld, two Belgian civilians had been swept into the violence. Peter Mueller and his nephew Johann Brodel had been hiding in a cellar in Honsfeld after fleeing Manderfeld to avoid conscription into the German army. Captured with the American prisoners, both men protested that they had nothing to do with the Americans. The Germans did not believe them and shot them near the Schür family’s tin-roofed barn. Brodel died instantly. Amazingly, the two bullets that passed through Mueller’s neck had not killed him. After crawling across the road, he managed to reach the kitchen door of the Schür home and knocked for help. The family hauled him inside, Adolf’s mother treating the wound with a bandage. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Suddenly a German SS man was at the door and barged his way inside, wanting to finish off the wounded man. A photograph of Christolf Schür hung on the wall — Adolf’s grandfather in a First World War uniform. Christolf Schür boldly thrust out his chest. “He was a German soldier in World War I, like me,” he bellowed, pointing to the photograph. “I’m glad he didn’t live to see this …” He motioned to Mueller, still bleeding in the chair. “He is just a dumb farmer. Leave him alone. We never hurt anyone like this in that war.” The SS man finally left. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Stegall (c. 11:00)

Of all the killings at Honsfeld, the murder of T/5 Edward L. Stegall is the best documented. Stegall was the mail orderly for B Company, 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion — a short, likeable guy from Humboldt, Tennessee, with a dark complexion. Some said he was part Indian. He strummed country tunes on his guitar to help stamp out homesickness. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

His friend Sergeant Francis Hayes described the surrender:

Everybody put their hands up and lined up at the door. Just as we got out the door, the first bunch had already gone out, and a machine gun on a German tank fired into the first group that had come out of the house. We were right there. We could see them falling just outside the door … I saw Milliner in the road; he was shot. He recognised me and yelled something. He was shot in the legs and he was crawling. Then a tank swerved towards him and just ran over him. I can still hear him screaming yet. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Hayes and Stegall were walking alongside the German tanks with their hands up when a shot rang out:

Stegall and myself were together, walking alongside those tanks. There was a shot and he fell. I reached for him; he was dead when he hit the ground. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Sergeant John M. Dluski, walking five feet away, saw exactly what happened:

At about 1100 hours, we were passing a column of tanks which had stopped on the road. All at once I hear a voice in perfect English call out, “Hey you.” I immediately turned my face to the left, and as I did, I saw an SS man standing in the turret of the tank shoot T/5 Stegall in the middle of the head with a revolver … I was not more than five feet away from the man who fired the shot. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

The Civilians of Honsfeld

Only eight civilians remained in Honsfeld: six to tend the cows, plus the priest, Father Henri Signon, and the burgomeister, Hubert Fickers. Among them was sixteen-year-old Andreas Peter Schroeder, whose four brothers were fighting for the Wehrmacht — one had already been killed at Caen with the 12. SS-Panzer-Division. His young age was the only reason he was not in Hitler’s army. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

On the 17th, Schroeder went to tend the cattle at a house on the outskirts of town. “There were seven or eight dead Americans in the yard.” They looked like they had been executed. He overheard two Germans talking. “We found seven Americans sleeping in bed,” they told him. “And so we took them out of bed and we shot them.” They were some of the GIs he had got to know. “They were good guys … killed wearing their long-john underwear.” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Walter Fickers, seventeen, had stayed behind with Erna Collas and her sister to help milk the cows. He watched from his window as the column passed. “The first deaths came from some German guards. I saw seven men up against a wall and shot.” After seeing that, he hid. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

That Sunday afternoon, hungry members of Kampfgruppe Peiper ransacked Father Signon’s home and invaded the local chapel. Several paraded about in the sacred vestments as sacramental wine was gulped down. As the priest recoiled, an artillery shell exploded on a tree outside the thick-walled building, showering shrapnel through the chapel window. One of those desecrating the chapel was killed instantly; another had an arm shorn off. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

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Büllingen

The Airfield (c. 07:00)

Peiper did not linger at Honsfeld. Receiving a report on the poor state of the road leading to Heppenbach — his assigned route — he decided to take the direction of Büllingen, a larger border town with a population of about two thousand, and a known American fuel depot. This was not his assigned axis; Büllingen belonged to the 12. SS-Panzer-Division. But the Hitlerjugend was still held up miles to the east, and Peiper decided to “borrow” their route. (Castor, La route des massacres, 2005, p. 49; Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025; Crookenden, Battle of the Bulge 1944, 1980)

As Kampfgruppe Peiper rushed toward Büllingen at seven o’clock, Sternebeck’s tank spearhead came upon an airstrip with a dozen Piper Cub observation planes for the 99th and 2nd Infantry Divisions. Somehow the ground crews had got frenzied word to the pilots: “Krauts! — big breakthrough!” Several of the L-4 planes buzzed off just before Peiper’s tanks arrived. The 2nd Infantry Division, unable to reach their aircraft, called down artillery fire on their own planes. Sternebeck’s armoured platoon blasted the remaining aircraft but were chastised over the radio by Peiper: forget the booty and get moving! (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

South of town, Companies B and C of the 254th Engineer Combat Battalion had been ordered to block the Honsfeld road. Company B’s lieutenant spotted the enemy at 06:00 in the darkness — Germans jumping from a tank and six half-tracks. They opened fire and repulsed three assaults, but around 07:00 about a dozen tanks reinforced the attackers. Having no anti-armour weapons, the engineers fell back. Until that morning, shooting had been confined to hunting deer in the Ardennes Forest to supplement their rations. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025; Cailloux, Ardennes 1944 Pearl Harbor en Europe, 1969)

Grant Yager’s Roadblock (c. 07:40)

Captain James Cobb of the Service Battery, 924th Field Artillery Battalion directed a hastily armed platoon to improvise a roadblock at the south entrance to town. The unlucky men were Sergeant Grant Yager and Privates Arthur Romaker and Santos Maldanado. They set up their ambush behind a small rise, covered by Private Bernard Pappel Jr on a .30-calibre machine gun. Besides a single bazooka and a machine gun, their team only had carbines and a few hand grenades. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

They were not ready when a German tank crested the rise — Sternebeck’s Spitze. Recovering, Yager loosed a bazooka rocket at Panzer #725 under SS-Scharführer Horst Rempel from less than a hundred feet away. The round hit with a flash and explosion; the wounded beast spun in the road. Yager cut down two fleeing crewmen before his carbine jammed. Pappel showered the steel hulk with his machine gun — the entire crew was killed. But within minutes the Germans brought up a half-track teeming with panzergrenadiers, and the little roadblock was surrounded. Yager and Romaker were allowed to give Pappel first aid for his arm and leg wounds. Then a German officer in a cream-coloured jacket approached — an officer who, Parker suggests, could only have been Josef Diefenthal. He motioned to Romaker to leave the wounded man. “My God!” Romaker exclaimed. “They shot Pappel in the head!” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Sternebeck’s Wrong Turn (c. 08:00)

Peiper had changed vehicles. Panther #001, driven by Otto Becker, had sputtered to a stop south of Büllingen — engine troubles. “Peiper didn’t like to ride in tanks,” his radioman Wilhelm Nusshag noted. “He preferred to go in an amphibian car.” Peiper switched to the command SPW of his old comrade Jupp Diefenthal, with his favourite driver Paul Zwigart at the wheel. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Without Peiper’s radio guidance, Sternebeck took the wrong fork in Büllingen and drove north toward Wirtzfeld rather than west. Alert tank destroyers of the 644th TD Battalion were lying in wait. One kilometre north of town, they ambushed the lead Panzer IV #631 of August Wien. Wien was killed instantly when the commander’s cupola was torn away. The radio crackled: “We could not locate the enemy,” Sternebeck said, “but with radio contact re-established, we were ordered to return.” Realising his error, Sternebeck wheeled about and raced back. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Panzer #615 under SS-Rottenführer Peter Kasparek made the same wrong turn, with SS-Unterscharführer Heinz Fremdling’s #613 following. Lieutenant Owen McDermott of Company C, 644th TD Battalion, set up an ambush on the reverse side of a slope leading into Wirtzfeld. As soon as the first tank crested the rise, he ordered his M-10 tank destroyers to open fire. All the Panzers were quickly hit and destroyed. Fremdling was killed; most of the crew of #615 was captured. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

The Fuel Dump (c. 08:30–10:00)

Despite the confusion, resistance evaporated once Peiper and his combat team pierced into the centre of Büllingen. The Americans woke to find the streets teeming with German armour. Preuß had taken serious losses from GIs shooting downward into his open SPWs from second-storey windows. He lost two platoon leaders: SS-Hauptscharführer Rudi Knobloch, wounded, and SS-Oberscharführer Gustav Otto, shot through the head. “The Amis fired down out of the houses into our open SPWs,” Preuß said, “and I had to get us out of the town as quickly as possible.” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Fifty Americans were captured near the market square and forced to refuel German tanks at gunpoint. The 5,000-gallon fuel dump was located on the road on the west end of town, 600 metres from the church by the cattle market. “We captured an American fuel dump and refuelled as rapidly as possible,” Peiper recalled. “American soldiers were working in that fuel dump also, and they were of great help in refuelling.” One of the captured men later complained that, when his filling obligations were done, the Germans placed him on a tank so it would not be fired upon. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025; Kraft de la Saulx, La Bataille des Ardennes, 2001, p. 49)

This captured fuel was all the more valuable because the Division staff’s promise to deliver five full fuel loads had only been partially honoured — only three rations had been distributed. The detour around the Losheim bridge had caused significant fuel wastage. (Grégoire, Les Panzer de Peiper face à l’U.S. Army, 1986)

American artillery now zeroed in on the town. Under mounting shellfire, the German tanks quickly took on fuel and raced away. The organisation of the battlegroup became confused once again. Preuß’s panzergrenadiers headed off over poor cattle trails to the west, while the heavy panzers sought paved roads. From Büllingen, the armour left the highway for narrow roads that were sometimes just muddy field tracks — through Schoppen, Faymonville, Ondenval, and Thirimont. A telling commentary on this section of Rollbahn D: Peiper’s progress from Büllingen to Thirimont averaged just 7 km/h. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Air Attack (c. 10:15)

At about 10:15, two P-47 fighter-bomber squadrons of the 365th Fighter Group — the “Hell Hawks” — struck Kampfgruppe Peiper. Unfortunately, the bombing and strafing near Büllingen did more imagined than real damage. The American pilots were agog as they watched hundreds of enemy vehicles scatter. “From K-912035 to K-930025, a hundred plus vehicles and fifty tanks are bumper to bumper for four miles along the roads and going north-west,” reported one pilot. Then a flock of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters dropped out of the clouds. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Luftwaffe Feldwebel Karl Laun, with the 84th Flak Sturm Battalion, watched from below:

There they are already, those Thunderbolts and Lightnings … Now, the first wave starts diving on us. Our quadruple flak platoon opens up and succeeds in setting the last plane on fire. However, our positions here along the highway are so unfortunate that a series of prematurely bursting flak shells makes seven of our men candidates for the Verwundeten medal. Instead of the advertised thousand planes, approximately fifty Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs arrive, who are evidently very reluctant to enter into dogfights. One can easily sense it from down here how they wriggle and turn to get out of the Jabos’ field of vision … (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Major John W. Motzenbecker of the 365th Fighter Group descended for a treetop-level search. What he saw shocked him: roads clogged with trucks, infantry, and tanks. A chunk of flak tore through one of his wings. “There’s a hell of a big convoy heading into our lines just south of Monschau,” he told his liaison with V Corps. “They fired at me. Could that be us, or is it the enemy?” “That,” the controller called back, “is the enemy!” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

The advance was delayed, but little physical damage had been done. Under Peiper’s orders, the column resumed the drive west. “These men were not the same as those at Crete,” Peiper commented wryly of von der Heydte’s thousand parachutists, who had failed to still the American reinforcements moving south. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

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The Road to Baugnez

The Capture of the 32nd Armored Reconnaissance (c. 11:00)

Having just left Schoppen, Peiper’s troops confronted four American jeeps that appeared on the reverse side of a hill. These eleven Americans were from the reconnaissance company of the 32nd Armored Regiment, 3rd Armored Division, sent that morning from Stolberg to scout roads to Saint-Vith. Lieutenant Lloyd Iames had told his driver, Corporal James I. Cummings: “There is nothing to worry about. We won’t be contacting the enemy.” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Cummings recalled the capture:

We went through some woods and then we started down a little hill over a curve into a little valley. There were tall shrubs on the sides of the road, and as we drove down into it, the Germans jumped up out of the bushes and started screaming … It reminded me of cowboys and Indians. But that was it for us; we were surrounded and put up our hands. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

There was one German officer — well-dressed, clean-shaven. He spoke to Lieutenant McDermott, and when McDermott gave him a smart answer, the German said: “You know I was educated in the U.S. in Boston.” Then: “At about 11:30 on Sunday morning, we will be in Paris.” McDermott shot back: “If you are in Paris, you’ll be behind a barbed wire fence.” Cummings was worried — McDermott was going to get them all shot. The German stepped in front of him. “What unit are you with?” Name, rank, and serial number. “You are a good soldier.” The jeeps were forced to drive along with the column. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

The Fagnou Detour (c. 12:30)

By noon, the armoured group reached Thirimont. From there, Peiper attempted to take a shortcut directly to Ligneuville via a very narrow, steeply sloping track — the Fagnou trail. The lead SPW and a Panzer IV became stuck in the marshy stream of the Ru des Fagnes. Roughly forty vehicles piled up behind the blocked crossing. (Castor, La route des massacres, 2005, p. 52; Grégoire, Les Panzer de Peiper face à l’U.S. Army, 1986)

Alphonse Grosjean, a twenty-nine-year-old farmer from Thirimont, watched from the woods:

I took a little dirt road through the fields. From Thirimont, I went downhill, passing across a little stream, le Ru des Fagnes, and began to go up the other hill when I heard a big roar of big engines behind me. I quickly pushed my bicycle into the forest and hid. I then spotted a column of about ten vehicles coming down from Thirimont. Instead of taking the dirt road, they took off cross country, and several vehicles got bogged down in the mud. From there I could see the crews waving and shouting. I was scared and I didn’t know what to do, so I hid and spent the night there. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

It was not until the following morning that this stranded section could cross the mire and rejoin the main road. (Grégoire, Les Panzer de Peiper face à l’U.S. Army, 1986)

Lieutenant Colonel Ray (c. 12:00)

Before reaching Thirimont, the column had captured another American jeep. Lieutenant Colonel John Ray was a West Point ordnance officer who had served his cadet years with Omar Bradley. His mission that morning was to warn ammunition supply points in the path of the German advance. “I knew what I was going to do was dangerous,” he recalled. Before departing, he gave his West Point ring to his brother Roger at First Army G-2. “Take care of this until I get back.” Somewhere near the Ondenval–Thirimont road, rifle fire stopped his jeep. A bullet went through the leaf on his helmet. Within a minute, two German soldiers were on top of them. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

From Ray’s captured papers, Peiper learned that Brigadier-General Timberlake had set up the headquarters of the 49th Antiaircraft Artillery Brigade at Ligneuville. Peiper had never captured an American general. He ordered his Panzerspitze to push ahead as quickly as possible. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

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Baugnez

Battery B on the N-32 (c. 12:45–13:00)

At the Baugnez crossroads, the N-32 highway from Malmedy to Ligneuville crossed the road from Waimes. Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion — thirty trucks, jeeps, and five ambulances following CCB of the 7th Armored Division to Saint-Vith — was just crossing the intersection when the lead vehicles came under fire from the west. Sternebeck’s two Panzer IVs, arriving at Bagatelle from Thirimont, had spotted the American column. The Panzers fired explosive shells at 900 metres; several trucks caught fire, vehicles crashing into each other. The crews jumped into ditches; some tried to escape toward Ligneuville or the nearby woods. (Castor, La route des massacres, 2005, p. 59; Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Sternebeck hardly paused. The mere sight of the long-gunned panzers sent American hands reaching in surrender. Sternebeck had orders to press on to Ligneuville without delay; he moved the prisoners back toward the crossroads and drove on, painfully aware that he was alone — only two tanks, a half-track of engineers, and Gerhard Walla’s Schwimmwagen. Right away, Sternebeck was on the radio: “August, follow up!” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

“Goddamn it!” (c. 13:10)

Behind the Spitze, the tanks of the 7. Panzer-Kompanie under Hauptsturmführer Oskar Klingelhöfer had opened fire on the truck column from the Thirimont road. SS-Unterscharführer Manfred Thorn, driving the lead Panzer IV #734, had ordered his gunner: “Explosive shells at 900 metres … Fire when ready!” The tank shook as each 75mm shell burst from the muzzle. Behind him, Klingelhöfer’s #701 and Hans Siptrott’s #731 joined in. The first two trucks were broadsided; one was burning. The entire American column halted. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Then Peiper arrived in Diefenthal’s SPW. He was furious.

I gave an order to cease fire several times, since I was annoyed at having my armoured spearhead held up, in view of the fact that we had lost so much time already. Furthermore, I was annoyed at having these beautiful trucks, which we needed so badly, all shot up. It might have taken two more minutes until I was understood everywhere. I thereupon loudly ordered them to continue to drive on at great speed. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Arvid Freimuth, driver of an 11. Kompanie SPW parked five metres behind Peiper’s vehicle, recalled his exact words: “Goddamn it! What kind of business is it to stop here for hours?” Peiper turned to the tank commanders. “The little that is to be done here, the men in the rear will do!” The radio crackled: “Fischer proceed!” Arndt Fischer’s Panther lurched ahead with Diefenthal’s SPW pulling in just behind. They had been at the intersection for scarcely five minutes. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

“Let’s Make an Excursion to Malmedy” (c. 13:15)

Diefenthal’s SPW passed the crossroads and turned south toward Ligneuville, gliding past abandoned American trucks. A road sign floated by — Malmedy was only a few kilometres away, and would provide far better roads to the Meuse. “Let’s make an excursion to Malmedy,” Diefenthal suggested. “Too bad we can’t do that,” Peiper responded. “We have orders to the contrary.” Even if Herbert Kuhlmann of the 12. SS-Panzer-Division was nowhere to be seen, Panzer Rollbahn C through Malmedy was assigned to his battle group. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Peiper put his hands to the sides of his eyes with the palms facing inward — mimicking the blinkers on a horse’s bridle. Narrow vision. They would stay on the bad roads. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

A short distance further, they passed a pioneer SPW pulled off to the right side of the road. “Of which company are you?” Peiper snapped. “Nine Panzer Pioneer.” “What is the matter with you? Why are you still standing here?” “We had a link-pin break.” “Get that fixed and drive on as fast as possible.” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Another delay came on the curvy road descending to Ligneuville. In spite of his own admonitions about time lost to looting, even Peiper could not resist when they discovered an abandoned American jeep loaded with booty. Zwigart screeched to a stop. Assenmacher poked around the vehicle, emerging with spoils. Diefenthal reached for a pack of Camel cigarettes; Peiper satisfied himself with a fistful of the GI square-shaped K-ration biscuits. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

The Sound of Machine Gun Fire (c. 13:20)

Just at that moment came a distant spasm of machine-gun fire. The sound echoed from the direction of the crossroads — clearly the staccato rip of an MG-42. Peiper raised his arm and motioned everybody forward. As they roared off, Hans Assenmacher could still hear the sound of firing behind them. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Back at the crossroads, Poetschke’s Panther — damaged when he had used it as a battering ram to push American trucks off the road — remained by the Café Bodarwé, its muzzle pointing into the field where the American prisoners were gathering. The verbal thrashing from Peiper had left Poetschke fuming. He dismounted and walked down among the prisoners. “Chauffeur? Chauffeur?” he called out — the best English he could muster to recruit American drivers. For the most part, the American artillery observer GIs ignored him. (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Gerhard Walla, the hapless enlisted messenger whose Schwimmwagen was still stuck in the ditch, asked Poetschke the question that every German soldier at the crossroads must have been thinking: “What about the prisoners?”

Walla received one answer. Reinhard Maier, the I. Panzer-Abteilung communications operator, heard another.

“We don’t bother with them,” Poetschke told Walla. “The infantry will come.” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

But Maier heard a very different response to the same question: “Kill them!” (Parker, The Battle of the Bulge, 2025)

Within the hour, Peiper would be at Ligneuville, overrunning the American service elements and narrowly missing General Timberlake. Behind him, on the frozen field south of the Baugnez crossroads, the Malmedy massacre was about to begin.

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This section ends as Peiper’s SPW descends toward Ligneuville at approximately 13:20–13:30. The massacre at the Baugnez crossroads is told in Ch 09.3: The Malmedy Massacre. The story of the column continues in Ch 09.4: Ligneuville, where the Spitze arrives at approximately 13:30 (Castor) / 14:00 (Grégoire) / 14:20 (Bovy).

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Killed in Action

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Named Persons

Name	Role
Brig. Gen. Timberlake	CO, 49th Antiaircraft Artillery Brigade
Lt. Col. John Ray	First Army ordnance officer; captured near Thirimont
Maj. Moore	CO, 3rd Bn, 394th Infantry Rgt
Maj. John W. Motzenbecker	365th Fighter Group (“Hell Hawks”)
Capt. James Cobb	Service Battery, 924th Field Artillery Bn
Capt. John Kennedy	CO, Co B, 612th Tank Destroyer Bn
Lt. Owen McDermott	Co C, 644th Tank Destroyer Bn
Lt. Bob Reppa	Troop A, 32nd Cavalry Recon. Sqn
Lt. Lloyd Iames	Recon. Section, 32nd Armored Rgt, 3rd Armored Div.
Lt. Laurens B. Grandy	612th Tank Destroyer Bn; ordered surrender at Honsfeld
Lt. Baysek	612th Tank Destroyer Bn; ordered surrender at Honsfeld
Lt. Lyle Bouck	Captured American officer, marched east from Lanzerath
SS-Ostubaf. Jochen Peiper	CO, Kampfgruppe Peiper
SS-Stubaf. Werner Poetschke	CO, I. Btl, SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt. 2
SS-Stubaf. Josef Diefenthal	CO, III. Btl, SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt. 2
SS-Hstuf. Oskar Klingelhöfer	CO, 7. Panzer-Kompanie, SS-Pz.Rgt. 1
SS-Ostuf. Werner Sternebeck	Panzerspitze commander
SS-Ostuf. Georg Preuß	CO, 10. (gep.) Kp, SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt. 2
SS-Ostuf. Karl Kremser	CO, 1. Kp, SS-Pz.Rgt. 1; identified as white-flag shooter
SS-Ostuf. Franz Sievers	CO, 3. Panzer-Pionier-Kompanie
SS-Ostuf. Erich Rumpf	CO, 9. Panzer-Pionier-Kompanie
SS-Ustuf. Arndt Fischer	Bn adjutant, Panther #152
Rudolf Christ	CO, 2. Kp, SS-Pz.Rgt. 1
Maj. Siegfried Taubert	CO, II./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 9
SS-Hscha. August Tonk	6. Kp, SS-Pz.Rgt. 1; Condor Legion veteran
SS-Oscha. Gustav Otto	10. Kp, SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt. 2; KIA Büllingen
SS-Hscha. Rudi Knobloch	10. Kp, SS-Pz.Gren.Rgt. 2; WIA Büllingen
SS-Scha. Horst Rempel	7. Panzer-Kompanie, Panzer #725; KIA Büllingen
SS-Uscha. Manfred Thorn	7. Panzer-Kompanie, driver of Panzer IV #734
SS-Uscha. Heinz Fremdling	6. Kp, SS-Pz.Rgt. 1, Panzer #613; KIA Büllingen
SS-Rttf. Peter Kasparek	6. Kp, SS-Pz.Rgt. 1, Panzer #615
August Wien	6. Kp, SS-Pz.Rgt. 1, Panzer #631; KIA Büllingen
Ernst Koehler	1. Kp, SS-Pz.Rgt. 1; witness to Kremser shooting
Reinhard Maier	I. Pz.Abt. communications; heard “Kill them!” order
Gerhard Walla	Schwimmwagen driver, Panzerspitze
Hans Siptrott	7. Panzer-Kompanie, Panzer IV #731
Hans Assenmacher	Radio operator, Diefenthal’s SPW
Paul Zwigart	Driver, Peiper’s SPW
Otto Becker	Driver, Panther #001
Wilhelm Nusshag	Peiper’s radioman
Rolf Ehrhardt	Driver, Panzer IV #701
Arvid Freimuth	Driver, 11. Kp SPW
Fw. Karl Laun	84th Flak Sturm Battalion
Sgt. James Gallagher	1st Recon. Platoon, 801st TD Bn
Sgt. George Creel	3rd Platoon, Troop A, 32nd Cavalry Recon. Sqn
Sgt. William Lovelock	Troop A, 32nd Cavalry Recon. Sqn
Sgt. Grant Yager	Service Battery, 924th FA Bn; bazooka at Büllingen roadblock
Sgt. Francis Hayes	B Co, 612th TD Bn; witness to Stegall murder
Sgt. John M. Dluski	B Co, 612th TD Bn; witness to Stegall murder
S/Sgt. Ralph J. LeBlanc	B Co, 612th TD Bn
S/Sgt. Billy Wilson	612th TD Bn; witness to white-flag shooting
Cpl. James I. Cummings	32nd Armored Rgt; driver, Lt. Iames’s jeep
T/5 Edward L. Stegall	B Co, 612th TD Bn; murdered at Honsfeld
Pvt. Elmer Haynes	B Co, 612th TD Bn; fired on tanks at Honsfeld
Pvt. Robert “R.B.” Taylor	B Co, 612th TD Bn
Pvt. Jim Foley	394th Infantry Rgt rest camp
Pvt. Arthur Romaker	Service Battery, 924th FA Bn; Büllingen roadblock
Pvt. Santos Maldanado	Service Battery, 924th FA Bn; Büllingen roadblock
Pvt. Bernard Pappel Jr	Service Battery, 924th FA Bn; MG at Büllingen; murdered
Pvt. James M. Milliner	Honsfeld; run over by tank
Pvt. Cecil Mann	Honsfeld; shot under white flag
Pvt. John E. Crowell	Honsfeld; shot under white flag
T/5 Robert H. Thomas	Honsfeld; killed after surrender
Roger Ray	First Army G-2; brother of Lt. Col. John Ray
Alphonse Grosjean	Civilian, Thirimont; witnessed Fagnou detour
Sanny Schür	Civilian, Lanzerath; watched column pass
Adolf Schür	Civilian, Lanzerath; watched column pass
Christolf Schür	Civilian, Lanzerath; confronted SS man (WWI veteran)
Andreas Peter Schroeder	Civilian, Honsfeld; witnessed aftermath
Walter Fickers	Civilian, Honsfeld; witnessed wall shooting
Hubert Fickers	Burgomeister, Honsfeld
Father Henri Signon	Priest, Honsfeld
Erna Collas	Civilian, Honsfeld; murdered by SS
Peter Mueller	Civilian, Manderfeld; shot but survived
Johann Brodel	Civilian, Manderfeld; shot and killed

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