From Military.com, AP
Harold Billow, the last-known survivor of a massacre of Americans during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, died May 17 at age 99. He will be laid to rest Thursday in Pennsylvania. He was a member of Army's 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion when his unit surrendered to German Waffen SS troops in December 1944.
According to various accounts, the Germans opened fire on the unarmed prisoners in a field, killing more to eighty in what became known as the Malmedy Massacre.
"As soon as the machine gun started firing, I went face down in the snow," billow told Lancaster Online in 2019. He played dead ad Germans searched for survivors. "Anybody that showed signs of life, they would point-blank shoot them in the head to finish them off," Billow said.
He said he stayed there for several hours before he and other survivors bolted. He made his way through hedgerows before reaching the safety of American lines. After the war, he was called upon to testify at a war crimes trial in which 43 German soldiers were sentenced to death for the Malmedy Massacre.
However, they were eventually released after investigators determined that U.S. guards had coerced confessions.
--GreGen
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