Something of interest
I knew that my Grandpa Phillips' brother, Peter Robert, was killed during World War II, in the Battle of the Bulge.
This was all that I knew:
One day earlier this month I randomly realized, "Hey, I can type this information into Google and see what I can find!"
What a discovery came:
First I only searched for "December 17, 1944" and "Battle of the Bulge" to see if that date was listed in someone's chronology of the battle. I found numerous results that said that the "Malmedy Massacre" occurred on that date during that battle. Some American troops in Belgium got captured by Nazi forces (about 130) and the Nazis simply lined the soldiers up in a field and shot the Americans. (80 of them got killed; the others made it away.) It was supposedly one of the worst atrocities that Nazi troops committed against American troops. (Although far more statistically worse things happened during the war, of course.) The Americans couldn't recover the bodies for another three weeks, but at least it was so cold out that the bodies were fairly-well preserved. I thought, "Holy crap! How bone-chilling." But then I thought, "Well, thousands of Americans died in the Battle of the Bulge; perhaps Bobby (that's the name he went by) died elsewhere.
So, then I thought, "Well, never underestimate the power of Google. And I added "Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion" to the search query. Lo and behold I found page upon page about the Malmedy Massacre that said that it was precisely this Battery that got captured and killed! I even found a couple of pages with Bobby's name listed under the killed. Even more bonechilling!
I relayed this information to my Dad and he was very curious and intrigued and bonechilled, as well; he never knew any more information than what I had originally known. That night he and I both happened to look up "Malmedy Massacre" on the Kent State Library's web page. Kent has three books about the massacre. Last night my parents came to visit and this morning, before they left, we trekked over to the library and checked the books out. The most recent book, from 1995, actually had "Peter R. Phillips" listed in the index, page 47.
We turned to page 47 to read a paragraph near the bottom that said something close to "The poor soldier was shot three times in the back, perhaps because he did not raise his hands high enough [to signify submission to his captors]. Autopsy results revealed that this soldier was almost definitely Pvt. Peter R. Phillips."
Man! I'm getting chills just typing this.
Needless to say, my dad and I aren't going to chat about this with my grandpa. Even if he does know, it's nothing he needs to have brought back to his mind.
I also found out that a movie came out in 2003, Saints and Soldiers, that is about four soldiers who escaped from the massacre. We watched it last night, before we found out the specifics from the book. The opening scenes of the movie show the massacre. How sad, terribly sad. The rest of the movie was your regular-ole war movie; it was pretty good. I'm not sure how true it was. But it was very useful in helping me to picture what it was like there at the time.
So, yeah, war is awesome.
This was all that I knew:
- Served with: Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion
- Died: December 17, 1944, The Battle of the Bulge (at 21 years of age)
One day earlier this month I randomly realized, "Hey, I can type this information into Google and see what I can find!"
What a discovery came:
First I only searched for "December 17, 1944" and "Battle of the Bulge" to see if that date was listed in someone's chronology of the battle. I found numerous results that said that the "Malmedy Massacre" occurred on that date during that battle. Some American troops in Belgium got captured by Nazi forces (about 130) and the Nazis simply lined the soldiers up in a field and shot the Americans. (80 of them got killed; the others made it away.) It was supposedly one of the worst atrocities that Nazi troops committed against American troops. (Although far more statistically worse things happened during the war, of course.) The Americans couldn't recover the bodies for another three weeks, but at least it was so cold out that the bodies were fairly-well preserved. I thought, "Holy crap! How bone-chilling." But then I thought, "Well, thousands of Americans died in the Battle of the Bulge; perhaps Bobby (that's the name he went by) died elsewhere.
So, then I thought, "Well, never underestimate the power of Google. And I added "Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion" to the search query. Lo and behold I found page upon page about the Malmedy Massacre that said that it was precisely this Battery that got captured and killed! I even found a couple of pages with Bobby's name listed under the killed. Even more bonechilling!
I relayed this information to my Dad and he was very curious and intrigued and bonechilled, as well; he never knew any more information than what I had originally known. That night he and I both happened to look up "Malmedy Massacre" on the Kent State Library's web page. Kent has three books about the massacre. Last night my parents came to visit and this morning, before they left, we trekked over to the library and checked the books out. The most recent book, from 1995, actually had "Peter R. Phillips" listed in the index, page 47.
We turned to page 47 to read a paragraph near the bottom that said something close to "The poor soldier was shot three times in the back, perhaps because he did not raise his hands high enough [to signify submission to his captors]. Autopsy results revealed that this soldier was almost definitely Pvt. Peter R. Phillips."
Man! I'm getting chills just typing this.
Needless to say, my dad and I aren't going to chat about this with my grandpa. Even if he does know, it's nothing he needs to have brought back to his mind.
I also found out that a movie came out in 2003, Saints and Soldiers, that is about four soldiers who escaped from the massacre. We watched it last night, before we found out the specifics from the book. The opening scenes of the movie show the massacre. How sad, terribly sad. The rest of the movie was your regular-ole war movie; it was pretty good. I'm not sure how true it was. But it was very useful in helping me to picture what it was like there at the time.
So, yeah, war is awesome.