When real heroes walk among us we should take a moment and reflect. . The year 2020 was one of challenges for many, and as we pass another year of heroes among us in may walks of life, one continues to stand out.

During the December 18th, 2019 meeting of the Lancaster County Chiefs of Police Association at the Four Seasons Golf Course a guest speaker drew the attention of members and guests alike with his riveting story of courage, perseverance, and his desire to remind all of us of the sacrifices made by veterans. Harold Billow, age 97, and a resident of Mount Joy stood in front of the group in his army uniform and told the story of his escape from untold savagery at the hands of Nazi forces during the liberation of Europe. The date was Dec. 17, 1944 — one day into Operation Watch on the Rhine, a surprise German offensive through the Ardennes Forest more commonly known as The Battle of the Bulge. That afternoon, Billow was an Army corporal riding in a truck near the end of a 26-vehicle convoy that was carrying soldiers of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion through Baugnez on their way to the strategic crossroads of St. Vith.

The Malmedy massacre was a war crime committed by members of Kampfgruppe Peiper, a German Waffen-SS unit led by Joachim Peiper and part of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, at Baugnez crossroads near Malmedy, Belgium, on December 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge. Eighty-four American prisoners of war were massacred by their German captors. The prisoners were assembled in a field and shot with machine guns; those still alive were killed by close-range shots to the head.

The term Malmedy massacre also applies generally to the series of massacres committed by the same unit on the same day and following days, which were the subject of the Malmedy massacre trial, part of the Dachau Trials of 1946.