MOUNT JOY, Pa. — Harold Billow, 99, the final recognized survivor of a World Battle II POW bloodbath throughout the Battle of the Bulge, can be laid to relaxation Thursday in Pennsylvania.
Billow, who died Might 17, was hooked up to the Army’s 285th Subject Artillery Commentary Battalion when his unit surrendered and he was taken prisoner by Waffen SS troopers as German forces launched an offensive in Belgium to attempt to change the struggle’s tide in December 1944.
In keeping with varied accounts, the Germans opened fireplace on the unarmed prisoners in a discipline, killing greater than 80 in what got here to be often known as the Malmedy Bloodbath.
“As quickly because the machine gun began firing, I went face down within the snow,” Billow instructed Lancaster On-line in 2019.
He performed lifeless because the Germans checked for survivors.
“Anyone that confirmed indicators of life, they might point-blank shoot them within the head to complete them off,” Billow mentioned.
Billow mentioned he stayed there for a number of hours earlier than he and different survivors bolted. He made his means by way of hedgerows earlier than reaching the security of American strains.
After the struggle, he was known as to testify at a struggle crimes trial during which 43 German troopers have been sentenced to loss of life for the Malmedy Bloodbath. Nonetheless, they have been finally launched after investigators decided U.S. guards had coerced confessions.
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