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The following story appears courtesy of and with thanks to Harold F Plank and James D Plank.

“No Letter Today”
Eventually we were relieved from that post and moved out to Henri-Chapelle, Belgium, where we spent a few days in rest and then went back into training. We then went to Tilff, Belgium, where we were housed in really good apartment buildings. It was a nice respite from some of the things we had been through. That wasn’t going to last forever, because on December 17th, 1944, the blitz started by the Germans in the Ardennes offensive; and we were loaded onto trucks and rode all afternoon and into the night from Tilff, Belgium, into the outskirts of Malmédy. There we took up roadblocks and made some reconnaissance patrols, trying to locate the Germans. We picked up a few engineers who had escaped what would later be known as the “Malmédy massacre.”

When we were not scheduled to man the road blocks, we took shelter in an abandoned café nearby. There we discovered a jukebox and a stack of records. Only one record was in English, and it was played over and over. It was very appropriate for the situation we were in. The title on one side was “Worried Mind,” the other, “No Letter Today.”

We spent December 17th through Christmas in and around Malmédy. Shortly after Christmas, we were on a combat patrol in hopes of at least capturing one German to find out what outfit we were opposing at that time. We were going up a roadway in a ravine and came under fire. We were pinned down for a short time, but eventually we made it through and into a little village. At that time I was ammunitions bearer for a fellow with a bazooka. If we ran into any tanks, we could fire at them with it. He was just a short fellow, and the bazooka was longer than he was. It was comical, keeping up with him pulling that bazooka along.

In this little village, we had had an artillery barrage by our own side to prepare it for entry. We came upon a stable that was on fire. There were live cattle in it that we couldn’t rescue, so we stood outside and shot as many as possible to keep them from suffering in the fire. We went on a little ways, and I remember seeing some Germans in overcoats running across a field into a woods. They were too far off for us to even bother to shoot at. When we came back off from this combat patrol, it was said that we had captured one German and killed 30. We did identify the unit that we were opposing there.

A few days later, in January 1945, we were moved from Malmédy to Stavelot in Belgium; and there we continued doing practically the same things we’d been doing around Malmédy, only it was a little more forested. Lots of times we were near enough to Germans that we could hear them talking but couldn’t see them. It was bitter cold with up to two feet of snow, and most of the time was spent in foxholes until January 18th. On the 13th of January, when I turned 21 years old, the captain of the company, knowing it was my birthday, pulled me out of my foxhole; and I spent the day at company headquarters in a barn with a fire in a barrel. That was the only time during 28 days in the Malmédy and Stavelot area that I spent inside.

On January 18th, we were pulled from the line there and went back to Tilff, Belgium, where we’d been stationed before. Not too long after that, it was decided that the 99th was going back into France to be put into a new outfit and trained for the invasion of Norway. I believe it took us 72 hours by train all the way back to Barneville, France, on the west coast, south of Cherbourg. There we started training again and were united with all the remnants of the Ranger Battalions that had been fighting in Italy and France, as well as the remainder of the First Special Service Forces that had been fighting in the mountains in Italy. We were now part of a regiment called the 474th Infantry Regiment (Sep). Of course, the 99th Infantry Battalion also had “(Sep)” after it because we didn’t belong to any larger outfit. But now we were with 474th Infantry Regiment (Sep). It was later decided that things were going so well in Europe that we no longer needed to think about invading Norway. The outfit was shipped, partly by rail and partly in convoy, back to Aachen, Germany, where the 99th would detach from the 474th. We went south into Germany and followed closely behind the advancing troops. We were split into company areas, where we searched out wooded areas, villages, farm houses, and anything that could hide either officials that might be wanted for war crimes or soldiers who had dressed in civilian clothes. We were also picking up anything that could be used as a weapon.

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