Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "Unbelievable Hero Saved Five Soldiers With a Bazooka" video.

  1. There is no clear evidence the men were purposely brought into the Malmedy field to be gunned down. It is possible they were shot because one or two POWs tried to escape. Once the shooting began, bedlam broke out. When it was over the Germans systemically inspected the bodies and shot each potential survivor at close range. A few American prisoners did successfully escape, and so the word very quickly spread of the massacre. Every participant of the battle that I knew over the years did remark to me that the incident steeled them to fight. I know 911 had that same effect on me. It still does.
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  2. I know you meant no disrespect, but the Medal of Honor is not won. Like ever other decoration, it is earned.
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  3.  @828enigma6  In the heat of battle one is not afforded the luxury of requesting ID from the opposing force. I doubt they knew the men were SS until they were captured. Of course the execution of the wounded was no accident. It was coldblooded murder. I merely pointed out what the defense team said at their trial, that nobody could show an order was ever given by Pieper to execute prisoners. The lack of such an order does not excuse the followup actions of the SS men once the shooting commenced.
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  4.  Joe Mamma  You are assuming the enemy was close enough to be seen uncovered. When you are being raked by machine gun fire, this the last thought on your mind. By 1943 the SS were wearing field grey uniforms similar to the Heer (German Army). In winter they would have white capped outer garments as well. Any soldier worth his salt will use cover and concealment to the maximum extent possible. he will not expose himself unless absolutely necessary. It's not like the movies where the camera switches back and forth between the belligerents. All you see is what your eyeballs show you. When an MG42 is ripping the ground all about you, I suspect you are mostly seeing dirt and snow.
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  5.  Joe Mamma  I spent 30 years in the military. We never said "won". It's not a competition with a first, second, and third place prize. Another misconception is that it is awarded by Congress. There is no such thing as a congressional medal of honor. Medal of Honor candidates are nominated by each service, usually through a review board. The names are submitted to the president, along with citations of their acts of bravery. The President decides who will receive the award. There is no limit to how many he can award. During the Civil War, when the award was created, it was handed out like candy, often to people who performed no act of sacrifice or gallantry. After the war the standards were tightened, and many medals were recalled because they did not meet the standard. Today it is extremely difficult to earn the medal.
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  6.  Joe Mamma  There's more to the story. General MacArthur was thrice nominated for the Medal of Honor - Vera Cruz, WWI, and WWII. He received the award for his third nomination. His former "clerk", Dwight Eisenhower, thought he did not merit it since it involved no specific act of heroism, but General Marshall disagreed. Marshall argued that a precedent had been set when Charles Lindbergh received the medal for his solo flight across the Atlantic. From a legal standpoint, this argument may be specious. Congress had awarded a special MOH to Lindy, not the military MOH. The reason for this subterfuge was that to do otherwise would have violated the existing law passed by Congress in 1918. As for Dugout Doug's bravery, there is ample evidence he demonstrated it in spades throughout his career. Like Patton, he was a man capable of great triumph and great vanity. Feet of clay infect us all.
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  7.  Joe Mamma  It's common for the guy at the pointy end of the bayonet to think the guy at the other end of the command chain is a coward who doesn't know what he's doing. I've read enough about MacArthur from people who worked with him to know he was both revered and hated. However, stories about him showing up in combat zones in slippers strike me as being just a bit apocryphal. Another popular myth was that he left the Philippines in 1942 with all his personal furniture stuffed on PT-41. No less an authority than Lt John D. Bulkeley, the skipper of PT-41, dispelled that rumor, but the story caught on with people who had a grudge agasint Mac. My old high school ROTC instructor, First Sergeant Dixon, served as an infantry platoon sergeant under Mac on Luzon, then again in Korea as a ILT platoon leader. He earned the Silver Star at Pork Chop Hill (I've read the citation), after which he resigned his commission and went back to being an NCO. He always referred to Mac as Dugout Doug. He didn't care for the man personally, but he acknowledged his skill as a strategic planner, especially when you consider he was operating on a fraction of the resources allotted to the European theater, or in the case of Korea, was constrained by the political limitations that Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff imposed. Was Mac a showman and a prima donna? Yes, I'd say so, in the same way Patton and Monty were. Did other senior brass despise him? Admiral King certainly did, but Mac got along well with Bull Halsey. Joe, I would never accuse combat veterans of lying about the leaders they despised, even if I knew the stories were false. If hating Mac or any other leader helped them cope, then maybe it's a good thing. But if you want to truly know a man, you have to study every aspect of him. Mac had a lot of faults, but he also possessed a lot of genius. To claim otherwise is to be disingenuous in the face of facts. The war the flag officer fight is not the same war the grunt fights. If it were, then anyone could be a successful general or admiral.
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  8.  @mooglemy3813  No, I'm not kidding you. Fighting in dense forest in winter snow, it is difficult to distinguish friend from foe, much less one type of foe from another type of foe.
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  9.  @mooglemy3813  I'm trying to take an objective view. The SS troops regularly committed atrocities, so did may Heer soldiers. All of this is well documented, but there are many notable exceptions. On the western front the SS units tended not to be quite as vicious as they were on the eastern front. They did take prisoners. At Arnhem they even treated captured British paras with respect. This may well be the exception to the rule, but it did happen. I doubt they had standing orders to shoot all prisoners or indiscriminately kill civilians on the western front. If they had, then legally we could shoot every SS man we captured, but we did not. The actions of the SS at Malmedy were not recorded in written orders. This was shown at their trials following WWII, and is why Pieper was not sentenced and executed after capture. He did die many years later at the hands of suspected former French Marquis operators. I doubt any of his former enemies shed a tear for him.
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  10.  Advant Garde  I've met two Bataan Death March survivors, one of whom was a coworker of mine for several years. He had an interesting perspective of the Japanese. He said not all the guards were brutal. As an example, he told me about one former guard he spotted on a trolley after the war while he was still in Japan. He decided to follow the man to see where he lived. He decided then what he was going to do and returned later that evening. When the former guard opened the door, he was terrified to see his former prisoner standing there. He thought he was going to kill him in front of his family, but instead, the American had brought gifts and food for them. He told the guard he had not come to harm him, but to thank him for not being one of the brutal ones who had tortured and abused him. It is possible to make distinctions rather than hate everyone, but that's always an individual choice. As a more recent example, I don't resent every Muslim just because some of them tried to kill me. I reserve my wrath for those most deserving of it.
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