Mount Joy center honors Malmedy Massacre survivor Harold Billow, who died in May

The Mount Joy post office at 1 E. Main St. will henceforth be known as the Harold Billow Post Office Building.

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, who represents Mount Joy and all of Lancaster County in Congress, introduced a bill in September to make the name change official, and it passed Friday as part of an omnibus federal spending package.

Pennsylvania’s entire congressional delegation — Republicans and Democrats alike — got behind the bill to rename the post office for Harold W. Billow, a U.S. Army veteran who, when he died in May at 99, was the last living survivor of the World War II’s Malmedy Massacre.

Smucker on Friday voted against the $1.7 trillion spending bill that included the Billow bill, saying “We simply cannot spend more and more year after year without consequences.”

 Nonetheless, he was glad his portion of the bill passed.

“I’m thankful that our community will be able to honor ... Mr. Harold Billow, an American hero, and an exceptional member of the Greatest Generation,” Smucker said in a news release. “He selflessly served our nation as a member of the United States Armed Forces and after his service displayed his steadfast patriotism remembering the 87 fellow soldiers lost during the Malmedy Massacre by displaying 87 American flags in his front yard on holidays throughout the year. May we always remember, honor, and give thanks for Mr. Billow’s service to our nation.”

During the Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s last-ditch attack against Allied forces in Belgium and Luxembourg, Billow was among 120 American soldiers who were captured near the Belgian village of Malmedy on Dec. 17, 1944. Instead of being transferred to a prisoner of war camp, Billow and the others were lined up and the Germans opened fire; over 80 died, but Billow fell down and laid still.

As survivors were being shot by the German SS troops, Billow said he heard another soldier yell, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” Billow ran and ultimately escaped to American lines.

In 2019, Billow told LNP reporter Earle Cornelius that he always paused on Dec. 17 to remember his fallen comrades.

Drafted in 1943, he was one of 10 from Lancaster County assigned to the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, which was part of the Allied invasion force that landed in Normandy, France.

Others included Luke Swartz and Ernest Bechtel, of Reinholds; Charles Haines, of Columbia; George Steffy, of Stevens; Carl Frey, of Hopeland; Sylvester Herchelroth and James Mattera, of Marietta; Robert “Sketch” Mearig, of Lititz; and Bill Reem, of Elizabethtown.

More than 20 soldiers managed to escape the massacre at Malmedy. But five county residents — Frey, Haines, Herchelroth, Steffy and Swartz — were killed or wounded.

Billow lived and worked most of his life in Mount Joy.