James Hampton Coates was born on October 17, 1922 in Richmond City, Virginia. He was the son of Thomas Edward Coates and Mittie Ann Bowen Coates Dalton. James served in Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion as a Private during World War II. He was Killed in Action on December 17, 1944 at the age of 22 and is now buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery, Kilmarnock, Lancaster County, Virginia, USA. He was one of the victims of Malmedy massacre when German SS soldiers of the 1st Panzer Division captured over 100 American soldiers at Baugnez Crossroads outside Malmedy, Belgium, on 17 December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge and, under orders to take no prisoners, placed them in an open field and then machine gunned them. When the machine guns stopped, the SS went through the field where some victims were still alive and systematically finished them off with pistols at short range leaving 84 soldiers dead when they had finished. Fortunately, when the machine guns first started shooting, a number of soldiers ran and some managed to escape and tell the story of how the Germans had treated the others who had not survived.