A Remarkable Historic Reunion 

During the night of Saturday, Dec. 23, 1944, Co. G 120^th Inf. was ordered to leave its location near Malmedy and join elements of the 117^th Inf. in the village of Parfondruy located on the Stavelot – Coo road and to participate in an attack the following morning.  (Note: some details of the attack were published by Charles Corbin on his web site http://home.earthlink.net/~crcorbin/Corbinp.html 1/16/07)

During the week prior to the attack of 12/24/44 members of the 1^st SS Panzer Division under the command of Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper had brutally massacred about 120 American prisoners in a field near Malmedy, killing 84 and wounding the others. On Tuesday, 12/19/44, the same group of Germans had killed 130 innocent civilians in Parfondruy and other nearby villages. 

          In the Spring 2004 issue of The 30^th Division News there appeared an article I had written describing the German atrocities and the G Co. action on 12/24/44.  Following is “The Rest of the Story”
 

          Soon after the 30^th newsletter arrived I received a call from Paul Arst, who had joined G Company not long before the Parfondruy fight and who was so new that he and I had not met each other. Paul said there was more to the story. He had been seriously wounded on 12/24/44 but was able to get back under his own power to a house near the line of departure.  Many civilians who had escaped the German massacres a few days earlier had taken shelter there as well as a number of wounded GI’s.  Also in the same house was a two-year old infant whose mother had been killed.  The baby had been wounded and left for dead by the Germans.  When darkness fell the civilians and wounded soldiers were removed. Paul Arst was eventually hospitalized, recovered, and rejoined Co G in time for the Rhine River crossing.    

          Fifty years later Paul and his wife returned to Stavelot to attend the celebration there of the liberation of Belgium by the American Army in 1944. Paul asked his Belgian guide (who spoke no English) to take him to Parfondruy so he could locate the spot where he had been shot.  He was introduced to Madame Monique Marquet-Thonon who was familiar with the village and who also spoke English reasonably well.  She accompanied Paul and his wife, Ellen, to the village where they drove slowly along the road towards Coo. 

Then Paul spied the house where he was placed after he had been wounded.  “That’s it. That’s the house we’re looking for!” Paul excitedly exclaimed. “Back up, I want to get a closer look at it.”  In response Madame Thonon exclaimed “I lived in that house when I was a little girl”.

t soon became clear that she was the child the Germans had shot and left for dead all those years before.  Although it took over three months for her to recover from the wound that left her unable to walk, she eventually regained the use of her legs and today is a happily married grandmother living in nearby Stavelot.

Contributed by Bob Warnick

Researched by Frank Towers
Compiled by James D. West
Page last revised 03/19/2008