Until the Allied counterattack, the Baugnez, Belgium, crossroads was behind German lines until 13 January 1945; and on January 14, the U.S. Army reached the killing field where the Waffen-SS had summarily executed 84 U.S. POWs on 17 December 1944. The military investigators photographed the war-crime scene and the frozen, show-covered corpses where they lay, which were then removed for autopsy and burial.
The foresnsic investigation documented the gun-shot wounds for the war-crimes prosecutions of the Nazi officers and soldiers who had done the killings. Twenty of the 84 corpses murdered that day had gunpowder residue on the head, indicating a coup de grace gun-shot to the head, a wound not sustained in self-defense.
The corpses of another twenty showed evidence of small-calibre gunshot wounds to the head, without gunpowder residue. Other corpses had one wound to the head, either in the temple or behind the ear.. Ten others showed evidence of fatal blunt force trauma injuries to the head, from having been hit or repeatedly hit with a rifle butt until breaking the bones of the skull.
The coup de grace gun shot wounds to the head were in addition to bullet holes made by machine guns. Most of the POW bodies were recovered from a small area of the farmer's field, indicating that the Germans had grouped them before the massacre took place.
--GreGen
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