The "Veteran's Day 2019: A Hometown Hero" Story

Harold Billow as he appeared in 1943 in uniform.

It was an ordinary day.  Driving through the small town known as Mount Joy which is a bit over 10 miles to the east of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  I have visited the town in the past to buy ice hockey supplies, to eat with friends and to watch my grandson play baseball.  But, today I am on another type of visit...to take photographs of the front of the home of Harold Billow who is the last remaining survivor of the WWII Malmedy Massacre which took place on December 17, 1944, at the Baugnez Crossroads in Belgium.  His front yard is home to 87 small American flags to honor the men who died due to the massacre which was part of the Battle of the Buldge.  

Harold Billow in uniform.

The 96 year-old veteran of the war has placed the flags on his front lawn for many years in memory of his friends who served with him during that tragic event in 1944.  As I drove down Main Street in Mt. Joy, I passed telephone pole after telephone poll that carried a banner honoring a serviceman who lived in Mt. Joy and before long I saw the banner honoring Harold Billow with his photo from the 1940s on one side and his current photo on the other side.  Harold's story is hard to read at times and the fact that he survived the Malmedy Massacre is remarkable.  In December of 1944, he was a 21-year-old Private with Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.  He was riding in a convoy of jeeps and trucks en route to the Belgian town of St. Vith.  

Map showing location of massacre.
Click on image to enlarge it.

It was a day after the Germans launched their attack known in history as the Battle of the Bulge.  The Germans had hopes of driving a wedge through the Allied armies advancing eastward toward Germany.  As his convoy was moving out of Malmedy it reached the crossroad village of Baugnez shortly after noon.  As they turned south onto N23, they were suddenly attacked by tanks and half-tracks of Kampfgruppe Peiper which was a tough SS unit led by Lt. Col. Jochen Peiper.  Some Americans in the lead vehicles got away, but the rest were trapped and the men, about 130 of them, were gathered as prisoners by the SS troopers.  They were disarmed, told to put their hands in the air and herded into a field on the east side of the N23 behind the Café Bodarwe which sits in the intersection in Baugnez.  There they stood together, waiting and helpless.  

Remains of soldiers on the snow-covered field of Malmedy.

Billow remembered two Germans setting up two machine guns atop a tank.  Then an officer rolled up in a staff car, stood and drew his pistol.  "He shot a guy to the right of me," Billow said.  "Then he shot a guy to my left."  The officer yelled a command to the two Germans on the tank and "they opened up fire where the rest of us guys were standing.  They were trying to kill everybody because they weren't to take any prisoners," Billow said.  More Germans joined in the killing spree, firing machine guns and small arms into the mass of prisoners.  Wounded men were shown no mercy.  Billow saw a medic  bandage a wounded man and then both were shot in the head.  When the firing began, some men, like Robert "Sketch" Mearig, one of several Lancaster County soldiers in the 285th ran to safety, but many, like Billow, simply dropped face down in the the snow and played dead.  Some got away with it while others did not.  "The Germans went through the field and everybody who showed any sign of life, they point blank shot them through the head," Billow recalled.  

Howard and Vera Billow on their wedding day.

Billow laid in the snow for what seemed like forever.  "I was thinking, 'I hope I survive so I can get back and tell people what they did to us,'" he recalled.  Another Lancaster County man, James Mattera, said, "Come on guys, let's get out of here," and a number of men jumped up and ran.  Billow was one of those who ran.  He still remembers the German bullets chewing up the ground around him as he fled.   They ran into the nearby café, but quickly left when they realized the Germans saw them enter.  He ran west and was later picked up by American soldiers of an engineering battalion.  Many of the other men in the café weren't as lucky, since the Germans set the café on fire and killed the soldiers when they fled the flames.  87 Americans died in the Malmedy Massacre including two Lancaster County men, Luke Swartz and George Steffy.  

On the reverse side of the banner shows
Harold Billow today.  His service to our country
was from 1943 to 1947 in the U.S. Army.

Billow recalled Swartz telling Ernie Bechtold, who had been his neighbor back home, "Ernie, something terrible is going to happen today."  Bechtold told Swartz, "not to talk so dumb.  Swartz died, shot in the head, but Bechtold survived.  Many who did escape traveled to Nuremburg after the war to testify in the war crimes trials of Germans who took part in the killings. I'm positive that Mr. Billow will never forget the horror and killing that took place that day, December 17, 1944.  And, that is why every 4th of July, Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, the front lawn of Billow's home at 206 Fairview St. in Mt Joy is festooned with 87 flags.  " There is a flag to represent each guy who fell that day," Harold W. Billow says!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.