Battlefield Marker Baugnez

This monument indicates to where German troops advanced during the Ardennes Offensive. A total of 26 of these monuments have been placed in the Ardennes.

The monuments were placed by the Belgian Touring Club in the ages 1947 to 1949. The effigy on the monument is a disabled German tank. All 26 plaques have the same text; “here the German occupation forces were stopped”.

In this case, here the German troops, the vanguard of “Kampfgruppe Peiper,” consisting of the 1st SS Panzer Battalion, 3rd Battalion of the 2nd SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, Heavy SS Panzer abteilung 501, 1st SS Panzergrenadier Battalion, 3rd SS Panzer Battalion and the 84th Luftwaffe Flak Battalion encountered the B Battery of the 285th U. S. Field Artillery Observation Battalion (F.A.O.B).

The 285th F.O.A.B. was en route from Malmedy to St. Vith to join the 7th Armoured Division. The F.O.A.B. was a battalion specialized in observing and locating enemy fire. When positions were located, coordinates were relayed to headquarters so that countermeasures such as artillery or aerial bombardment could be taken.

TThe 285th F.O.A.B. thus accidentally encountered the vanguard of Kampfgruppe Peiper here. They had earlier that morning while passing through the woods in the Ardennes stumbled upon a swampy area and had to turn right around to still find a way west via the main road.

Upon reaching the crossroads at Baugnez (now a traffic circle), the vanguard turned left toward Ligneuville and overran the American column. The 285th F-A.O.B. was forced to surrender with great force. The captured American soldiers were herded together in the field to the right of the crossroads and murdered in cold blood. This war crime has become known as “the Malmedy Masacre.

As such, the German army was not stopped here. The Kampfgruppe Peiper sought a way to the Meuse via Ligneuville, and turned left here at the crossroads and encountered the Americans.

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Source

• Text: Ed Lewandowski
• Photos: Ed Lewandowski