WORLD WAR II: BATTLE OF THE BULGE.

Directional sign "MALMEDY 11K". Recovered from the area around Malmedy after January 1945.

Directional sign "MALMEDY 11K". Recovered from the area around Malmedy after January 1945. Double-sided enameled road sign, taken from a road junction 11 km from Malmedy, possibly from a cross roads south east of Malmedy at Stavelot or to the south at Recht. Dark blue base with slightly raised white enameled letters, 8 drilled holes to secure the sign. Slight wear to the sign and rust to edges. 12 x 50 inches (300 x 1280mm).
Provenance: A Battle of the Bulge collector from near Bastogne.

A poignant directional sign to Malmedy, a place where an atrocity by German troops galvanized the American defense against the German advance. Malmedy was the site of the first of a series of atrocities committed by members of Kampfgruppe Peiper, part of the SS Division Leibstandarte, a German Waffen-SS unit led by Joachim Peiper. The unit committed war crimes at the Baugnez crossroads on December 17, 1944, by rounding up the American prisoners who had surrendered and calmly machine gunned 84 of them in an open field. They committed further atrocities on the 17th and 18th December in that same area, with over 500 civilians and soldiers kileld. Peiper and his mechanised unit had been under orders to sweep through the American line, advance via Stavelot and Trois-ponts and seize the Meuse bridges near Huy, so that the main 6th Panzer force could move through and advance quickly on Antwerp. Peiper had orders to conduct himself as if he were on the eastern front, where fighting had always been vicious and without quarter. Of the 125 American prisoners rounded up by Pieper's troops about 43 managed to escape and hid in houses and in the woods. As the news of the massacre spread amongst the American defenders, they were equally steely in their defense. The German soldiers of that group (those alive) were later rounded up and stood trial at the Dachau trials in 1946. Peiper and 69 members of his unit were tried, and many given life sentences, which were later commuted.