On 17 December 1944, between noon and 1 pm, the German strike force Kampfgruppe Peiper (under Joachim Peiper) approached the Baugnez crossroads, two miles south of the city of Malmedy, Belgium. Meanwhile, a U.S. Army convoy of 20 vehicles from B Battery of the 285th Field Artillery Onserbvation Battalion, was negotiating those crossroads, and then turning right , towards Ligneuville and St. Vith, in order to join the US 7th Armored Division.
Unfortunately, the Germans saw the US force first and the spearhead unit fired upon and destroyed the first and last vehicles, which immobilized the convoy and halted the American advance.
The American convoy was outnumbered and outgunned and the soldiers of the 285th surrendered.
After the brief battle, the tanks and armored vehicles of the Kampfgruppe Peiper convoy continued west to Ligneuville; while at the Baugnez crossroads, the Waffen-SS assembled the just surrendered U.S. P.O.W.s in a farmer's field and added in another group of prisoners captured earlier that day.
And, Then. --GreGen
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