I think one of the most memorable things [in Belgium] was Christmas eve [1944] along the Salm River line. We had some twenty-some-odd German prisoners that we'd taken and on Christmas eve, the 505th, in their deployment, stuck out in the overall [line] of the German advance. So the name of the game was to withdraw. You cannot make a night withdrawal with enemies in a bitter cold snow and bring these people back; I won't go on record and say it was another Malmedy massacre. But it was in fact another massacre that took place that you can't read about, you won't hear about.

It was a matter of not being able to comply with the order to withdraw and do it without losing your own people and bring back a bunch of enemy people....No roads to speak of and you're coming back through the damn woods, so the name of the game was, you don't bring prisoners back. It's a sad commentary, and this was on Christmas Eve, and we had to withdraw, and we had twenty-two to twenty-three [SS] prisoners. One of the German prisoners who was very well educated-an officer that went to school in the United States and spoke English very well - couldn't understand the rationale. If the shoe had been on the other foot, you'd have said the same thing. To be just a statistic, that's just some of the fate of being a wartime situation. It was right there and then, a matter of elimination. There were about eight or ten [Americans soldiers]. It was just doing a job and it was over.