Joachim Peiper and his vicious bunch of SS thugs marched US 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion into a field near Malmedy in January 1945 and shot them. There were a series of other massacres of US soldiers which were attributed to Peiper. The hunters were members of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. They were horrified by the brutality of the action. It was also the biggest massacre of US soldiers in the Second World War and caused uproar among the US public.