Reagan’s Visit to Germany

The President’s indecision on visiting German war cemeteries and concentration camps brings back vivid memories of that bitter Christmas of 1944.

I was a young major in the 77th Evacuation Hospital, probably the only evac hospital left on the north flank during the Battle of the Bulge.

Just a few miles south was the little town of Malmedy, the scene of the massacre of a hundred or more U.S. troops who had surrendered to the SS Panzer troops of Col. Joachim Peiper, the notorious war criminal. After the troops had surrendered the Germans lined them up and machine-gunned all of them.

But three Americans survived. They came out through my hospital and into my wards because all had been shot through the face.

News of this massacre spread through the front with the speed of light, enraging our soldiers to retaliate, much to the annoyance of our officers who wanted prisoners for intelligence purposes.

It was touch and go for us but in two days the 1st, 9th and 99th Divisions came in and wired in the artillery. Thereafter, the Germans never moved north one inch. They flowed westward far behind us until the 30th and 82nd Airborne Divisions came in.

Despite the hatred, we treated German wounded exactly the same as American wounded. I had dozens of German and American throat wounds and each man helped the others in their desperate condition; nationalities were forgotten by men near death.

The Germans buried at Bitburg, whose cemetery the President expects to visit, may well be the soldiers who murdered our men at Malmedy.

E.S. WRIGHT MD

North Hollywood