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THE GREATNESS OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE
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machine gun fire into a group of about one hundred fifty Americans who had been disarmed and herded into a field in the opening hours of the present German counter 'offensive. William B. Summers of Glenville. West Virginia, declared: 'We had to lie there and listen to the German non-coms kill with pistols every one of our wounded men who groaned or who tried to move.' Summers escaped by playing dead. The Americans were members of an artillery observation battalion ambushed and trapped at a fork in the road . . . caught by a powerful German armored column of Tiger tanks, whose heavy guns quickly shot up the two dozen American trucks and lightlyarmored vehicles. There were no heavy weapons in the American observation column and the entire unit quickly had to surrender. Summers said: 'We were just moving up to take-over a position at the top of a hill and as we got to the road intersection they opened fire on us. They had at least fifteen to twenty tanks. Then they disarmed us. They then searched us. They took our wristwatches . . . and anything else they wanted. I guess we were lined up on that road for one full hour. Then they stood us all together in an open field. I thought something was wrong. As we were standing there, one Ger
man soldier, moving past in a tank column less than fifty yards away, pulled out a pistol and emptied it into our men.' A grimy soldier, sitting in the little room here with Summers ran his hands through mudcaked hair and broke into sobs . . . There were tears in Summers' eyes as he went on:
" 'Then the Germans opened on us from their armored cars with machine guns. We hadn't tried to run away or anything. We were just standing there with our hands up and they tried to murder us all. And they did murder a lot of us. There was nothing to do but flop onto the ground and play dead.' Private William Green of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, took up the story. He said: 'I never saw such slaughter before in this war. They were cutting us down like guinea pigs. Then those German non-commissioned officers began walking around and knocking off our wounded. I kept my head down, but after they had emptied their pistols, I could hear them click fresh cartridges in their hands while they were reloading. Then they went on looking for more of our men to shoot.' Charles F. Apoman of Verona, Pennsylvania, declared: 'We just hoped and prayed while we lay there listening to them shoot every man who moved.' The survivors lay in tense, rigid silence in the freezing mud. They lay there for one hour before cautious glances showed that all the Germans had moved away except one Tiger tank. Harold W. Billow of Mt. Joy, Pennsylvania, said: 'That tank wasn't more than one